(NOTE: The electronic text obtained from The Electronic Bible Society was
not completely corrected. EWTN has corrected all discovered errors.)
Transliteration of Greek words: All phonetical except: w = omega; h serves
three puposes: 1. = Eta; 2. = rough breathing, when appearing initially
before a vowel; 3. = in the aspirated letters theta = th, phi = ph, chi =
ch. Accents are given immediately after their corresponding vowels: acute =
' , grave = `, circumflex = ^. The character ' doubles as an apostrophe,
when necessary.
ST. JEROME
LETTERS 54-72
[Translated by The Hon. W. H. Fremantle, M.A., Canon of Canterbury
Cathedral and Fellow and Tutor of Balliol College, Oxford, with the
assistance of the Rev. G. Lewis, M.A., of Balliol College, Oxford, Vicar of
Dodderhill near Droitwick, and the Rev. W. G. Martley, M.A., of Balliol
College, Oxford.]
LETTER LIV: TO FURIA.
A letter of guidance to a widow on the best means of preserving her
widowhood (according to Jerome 'the second of the three degrees of
chastity'). Furia had at one time thought of marrying again but eventually
abandoned her intention and devoted herself to the care of her young
children and her aged father. Jerome draws a vivid picture of the dangers
to which she is exposed at Rome, lays down rules of conduct for her
guidance, and commends her to the care of the presbyter Exuperius
(afterwards bishop of Toulouse). The date of the letter is 394 A. D.
1. You beg and implore me in your letter to write to you--or rather
write back to you-- what mode of life you ought to adopt to preserve the
crown of widowhood and to keep your reputation for chastity unsullied. My
mind rejoices, my reins exult, and my heart is glad that you desire to be
after marriage what your mother Titiana of holy memory was for a long time
in marriage.(8) Her prayers and supplications are heard. She has succeeded
in winning afresh in her only daughter that which she herself when living
possessed. It is a high privilege of your family that from the time of
Camillus(9) few or none of your house are described as contracting second
marriages. Therefore it will not redound so much to your praise if you
continue a widow as to your shame if being a Christian you fail to keep
what heathen women have jealously guarded for so many centuries.
2. I say nothing of Paula and Eustochium, the fairest flowers of your
stock; for, as my object is to exhort you, I do not wish it to appear that
I am praising them. Blaesilla too I pass over who following her husband--
your brother--to the grave, fulfilled in a short time of life a long time
of virtue.(1) Would that men would imitate the laudable examples of women,
and that wrinkled old age would pay at last what youth gladly offers at
first! In saying this I am putting my hand into the fire deliberately and
with my eyes open. Men will knit their brows and shake their clenched fists
at me;
"In swelling tones will angry Chremes rave."(2)
The leaders will rise as one man against my epistle; the mob of patricians
will thunder at me. They will cry out that I am a sorcerer and a seducer;
and that I should be transported to the ends of the earth. They may add, if
they will, the title of Samaritan; for in it I shall but recognize a name
given to my Lord. But one thing is certain. I do not sever the daughter
from the mother, I do not use the words of the gospel: "let the dead bury
their dead."(3) For whosoever believes. in Christ is alive; and he who
believes in Him "ought himself also so to walk even as He walked."(4)
3. A truce to the calumnies which the malice of backbiters continually
fastens upon all who call themselves Christians to keep them through fear
of shame from aspiring to virtue. Except by letter we have no knowledge of
each other; and where there is no knowledge after the flesh, there can be
no motive for intercourse save a religious one. "Honour thy father,"(5) the
commandment says, but only if he does not separate you from your true
Father. Recognize the tie of blood but only so long as your parent
recognizes his Creator. Should he fail to do so, David will sing to you:
"hearken, O daughter, and consider, and incline thine ear; forget also
thine own people and thy father's house. So shall the king greatly desire
thy beauty, for he is thy Lord."(6) Great is the prize offered for the
forgetting of a parent, "the king shall desire thy beauty." You have heard,
you have considered, you have inclined your ear, you have forgotten your
people and your father's house; therefore the king shall desire your beauty
and shall say to you: -- "thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in
thee."(7) What can be fairer than a soul which is called the daughter of
God,(1) and which seeks for herself no outward adorning.(2) She believes in
Christ, and, dowered with this hope of greatness(3) makes her way to her
spouse; for Christ is at once her bridegroom and her Lord.
4. What troubles matrimony involves you have learned in the marriage
state itself; you have been surfeited with quails' flesh(4) even to
loathing; your mouth has been filled with the gall of bitterness; you have
expelled the indigestible and unwholesome food; you have relieved a heaving
stomach. Why will you again swallow what has disagreed with you? "The dog
is turned to his own vomit again and the sow that was washed to her
wallowing in the mire."(5) Even brute beasts and flying birds do not fall
into the same snares twice. Do you fear extinction for the line of Camillus
if you do not present your father with some little fellow to crawl upon his
breast and slobber his neck? As if all who marry have children! and as if
when they do come, they always resemble their forefathers! Did Cicero's son
exhibit his father's eloquence? Had your own Cornelia,(6) pattern at once
of chastity and of fruitfulness, cause to rejoice that she was mother of
her Gracchi? It is ridiculous to expect as certain the offspring which
many, as you can see, have not got, while others who have had it have lost
it again. To whom then are you to leave your great riches? To Christ who
cannot die. Whom shall you make your heir? The same who is already your
Lord. Your father will be sorry but Christ will be glad; your family will
grieve but the angels will rejoice with you. Let your father do what he
likes with what is his own. You are not his to whom you have been born, but
His to whom you have been born again, and who has purchased you at a great
price with His own blood.(7)
5. Beware of nurses and waiting maids and similar venomous creatures
who try to satisfy their greed by sucking your blood. They advise yon to do
not what is best for you but what is best for them. They are for ever
dinning into your ears Virgil's lines:--
"Will you waste all your youth in lonely grief
And children sweet, the gifts of love, forswear?"(8)
Wherever there is holy chastity, there is also frugal living; and wherever
there is frugal living, servants lose by it. What they do not get is in
their minds so much taken from them. The actual sum received is what they
look to, and not its relative amount. The moment they see a Christian they
at once repeat the hackneyed saying:--"The Greek! The impostor!"(1) They
spread the most scandalous reports and, when any such emanates from
themselves, they pretend that they have heard it from others, managing thus
at once to originate the story and to exaggerate it. A lying rumour goes
forth; and this, when it has reached the married ladies and has been fanned
by their tongues, spreads through the provinces. You may see numbers of
these--their faces painted, their eyes like those of vipers, their teeth
rubbed with pumice-stone--raving and carping at Christians with insane
fury. One of these ladies,
A violet mantle round her shoulders thrown,
Drawls out some mawkish stuff, speaks through her nose,
And minces half her words with tripping tongue.(2)
Hereupon the rest chime in and every bench expresses hoarse approval. They
are backed up by men of my own order who, finding themselves assailed,
assail others. Always fluent in attacking me, they are dumb in their own
defence; just as though they were not monks themselves, and as though every
word said against monks did not tell also against their spiritual
progenitors the clergy. Harm done to the flock brings discredit on the
shepherd. On the other hand we cannot but praise the life of a monk who
holds up to veneration the priests of Christ and refuses to detract from
that order to which he owes it that be is a Christian.
6. I have spoken thus, my daughter in Christ, not because I doubt that
you will be faithful to your vows,(3) (you would never have asked for a
letter of advice had you been uncertain as to the blessedness of monogamy):
but that you may realize the wickedness of servants who merely wish to sell
you for their own advantage, the snares which relations may set for you and
the well meant but mistaken suggestions of a father. While I allow that
this latter feels love toward you, I cannot admit that it is love according
to knowledge. I must say with the apostle: "I bear them record that they
have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge."(4) Imitate rather--I
cannot say it too often--your holy mother(5) whose zeal for Christ comes
into my mind as often as I remember her, and not her zeal only but the
paleness induced in her by fasting, the alms given by her to the poor, the
courtesy shewn by her to the servants of God, the lowliness of her garb and
heart, and the constant moderation of her language. Of your father too I
speak with respect, not because he is a patrician and of consular rank but
because he is a Christian. Let him be true to his profession as such. Let
him rejoice that he has begotten a daughter for Christ and not for the
world. Nay rather let him grieve that you have in vain lost your virginity
as the fruits of matrimony have not been yours. Where is the husband whom
he gave to you? Even had he been lovable and good, death would still have
snatched all away, and his decease would have terminated the fleshly bond
between you. Seize the opportunity, I beg of you, and make a virtue of
necessity. In the lives of Christians we look not to the beginnings but to
the endings. Paul began badly but ended well. The start of Judas wins
praise; his end is condemned because of his treachery. Read Ezekiel, "The
righteousness of the righteous shall not deliver him in the day of his
transgression; as for the wickedness of the wicked he shall not fall
thereby in the day that he turneth from his wickedness."(1) The Christian
life is the true Jacob's ladder on which the angels ascend and descend,(2)
while the Lord stands above it holding out His hand to those who slip and
sustaining by the vision of Himself the weary steps of those who ascend.
But while He does not wish the death of a sinner, but only that he should
be converted and live, He hates the lukewarm(3) and they quickly cause him
loathing. To whom much is forgiven, the same loveth much.(4)
7. In the gospel a harlot wins salvation. How? She is baptized in her
tears and wipes the Lord's feet with that same hair with which she had
before deceived many. She does not wear a waving headdress or creaking
boots, she does not darken her eyes with antimony. Yet in her squalor she
is lovelier than ever. What place have rouge and white lead on the face of
a Christian woman? The one simulates the natural red of the cheeks and of
the lips; the other the whiteness of the face and of the neck. They serve
only to inflame young men's passions, to stimulate lust, and to indicate an
unchaste mind. How can a woman weep for her sins whose tears lay bare her
true complexion and mark furrows on her cheeks? Such adorning is not of the
Lord; a mask of this kind belongs to Antichrist. With what confidence can a
woman raise features to heaven which her Creator must fail to recognize? It
is idle to allege in excuse for such practices girlishness and youthful
vanity. A widow who has ceased to have a husband to please, and who in the
apostle's language is a widow indeed,(5) needs nothing more but
perseverance only. She is mindful of past enjoyments, she knows what gave
her pleasure and what she has now lost. By rigid fast and vigil she must
quench the fiery darts of the devil.(1) If we are widows, we must either
speak as we are dressed, or else dress as we speak. Why do we profess one
thing, and practise another? The tongue talks of chastity, but the rest of
the body reveals incontinence.
8. So much for dress and adornment. But a widow "that liveth in
pleasure"--the words are not mine but those of the apostle--"is dead while
she liveth."(2) What does that mean--"is dead while she liveth"? To those
who know no better she seems to be alive and not as she is, dead in sin;
yes, and in another sense dead to Christ, from whom no secrets are hid.
"The soul that sinneth it shall die."(3) "Some men's sins are open ...
going before to judgment: and some they follow after. Likewise also good
works are manifest, and they that are otherwise cannot be hid.(4) The words
mean this:--Certain persons sin so deliberately and flagrantly that you no
sooner see them than you know them at once to be sinners. But the defects
of others are so cunningly concealed that we only learn them from
subsequent information. Similarly the good deeds of some people are public
property, while those of others we come to know only through long intimacy
with them. Why then must we needs boast of our chastity, a thing which
cannot prove itself to be genuine without its companions and attendants,
continence and plain living? The apostle macerates his body and brings it
into subjection to the soul lest what he has preached to others he should
himself fail to keep;(5) and can a mere girl whose passions are kindled by
abundance of food, can a mere girl afford to be confident of her own
chastity?
9. In saying this, I do not of course condemn food which God created to
be enjoyed with thanksgiving,(6) but I seek to remove from youths and girls
what are incentives to sensual pleasure. Neither the fiery Etna nor the
country of Vulcan,(7) nor Vesuvius, nor Olympus, burns with such violent
heat as the youthful marrow of those who are flushed with wine and filled
with food. Many trample covetousness under foot, and lay it down as readily
as they lay down their purse. An enforced silence serves to make amends for
a railing tongue. The outward appearance and the mode of dress can be
changed in a single hour. All other sins are external, and what is external
can easily be cast away. Desire alone, implanted in men by God to lead them
to procreate children, is internal; and this, if it once oversteps its own
bounds, becomes a sin, and by a law of nature cries out for sexual
intercourse. It is therefore a work of great merit, and one which requires
unremitting diligence to overcome that which is innate in you; while living
in the flesh not to live after the flesh; to strive with yourself day by
day and to watch the foe shut up within you with the hundred eyes of the
fabled Argus.(1) This is what the apostle says in other words: "Every sin
that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication
sinneth against his own body."(2) Physicians and others who have written on
the nature of the human body, and particularly Galen in his books entitled
On matters of health, say that the bodies of boys and of young men and of
full grown men and women glow with an interior heat and consequently that
for persons of these ages all food is injurious which tends to promote this
heat: while on the other hand it is highly conducive to health in eating
and in drinking to take things cold and cooling. Contrariwise they tell us
that warm food and old wine are good for the old who suffer from humours
and from chilliness. Hence it is that the Saviour says "Take heed to
yourselves lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting and
drunkenness, and cares of this life."(3) So too speaks the apostle: "Be not
drunk with wine, wherein is excess."(4) No wonder that the potter spoke
thus of the vessel which He had made when even the comic poet whose only
object is to know and to describe the ways of men tells us that
"Where Ceres fails and Liber, Venus droops."(5)
10. In the first place then, till you have passed the years of early
womanhood, take only water to drink, for this is by nature of all drinks
the most cooling. This, if your stomach is strong enough to bear it; but if
your digestion is weak, hear what the apostle says to Timothy: "use a
little wine for thy stomach's sake and thine often infirmities."(6) Then as
regards your food you must avoid all heating dishes. I do not speak of
flesh dishes only (although of these the chosen vessel declares his mind
thus: "it is good neither to eat flesh nor to drink wine"(7)) but of
vegetables as well. Everything provocative or indigestible is to be
refused. Be assured that nothing is so good for young Christians as the
eating of herbs. Accordingly in another place he says: "another who is weak
eateth herbs."(1) Thus the heat of the body must be tempered with cold
food. Daniel and the three children lived on pulse.(2) They were still boys
and had not come yet to that frying-pan on which the King of Babylon fried
the eiders(3) who were judges. Moreover, by an express privilege of God's
own giving their bodily condition was improved by their regimen. We do not
expect that it will be so with us, but we look for increased vigour of soul
which becomes stronger as the flesh grows weaker. Some persons who aspire
to the life of chastity fall midway in their journey from supposing that
they need only abstain from flesh. They load their stomachs with vegetables
which are only harmless when taken sparingly and in moderation. If I am to
say what I think, there is nothing which so much heats the body and
inflames the passions as undigested food and breathing broken with
hiccoughs. As for you, my daughter, I would rather wound your modesty than
endanger my case by understatement. Regard everything as poison which bears
within it the seeds of sensual pleasure. A meagre diet which leaves the
appetite always unsatisfied is to be preferred to fasts three days long. It
is much better to take a little every day than some days to abstain wholly
and on others to surfeit oneself. That rain is best which falls slowly to
the ground. Showers that come down suddenly and with violence wash away the
soil.
11. When you eat your meals, reflect that you must immediately
afterwards pray and read. Have a fixed number of lines of holy scripture,
and render it as your task to your Lord. On no account resign yourself to
sleep until you have filled the basket of your breast with a woof of this
weaving. After the holy scriptures you should read the writings of learned
men; of those at any rate whose faith is well known. You need not go into
the mire to seek for gold; you have many pearls, buy the one pearl with
these.(4) Stand, as Jeremiah says, in more ways than one that so you may
come on the true way that leads to the Father.(5) Exchange your love of
necklaces and of gems and of silk dresses for earnestness in studying the
scriptures. Enter the land of promise that flows with milk and honey.(6)
Eat fine flour and oil. Let your clothing be, like Joseph's, of many
colors.(7) Let your ears like those of Jerusalem(8) be pierced by the word
of God that the precious grains of new corn may hang from them. In that
reverend man Exuperius(1) you have a man of tried years and faith ready to
give you constant support with his advice.
12. Make to yourself friends of the mammon of unrighteousness that they
may receive you into everlasting habitations.(2) Give your riches not to
those who feed on pheasants but to those who have none but common bread to
eat, such as stays hunger while it does not stimulate lust. Consider the
poor and needy.(3) Give to everyone that asks of you,(4) but especially
unto them who are of the household of faith.(5) Clothe the naked, feed the
hungry, visit the sick.(6) Every time that you hold out your hand, think of
Christ. See to it that you do not, when the Lord your God asks an alms of
you, increase riches which are none of His.
13. Avoid the company of young men. Let long baited youths dandified
and wanton never be seen under your roof. Repel a singer as you would some
bane. Hurry from your house women who live by playing and singing, the
devil's choir whose songs are the fatal ones of sirens. Do not arrogate to
yourself a widow's license and appear in public preceded by a host of
eunuchs. It is a most mischievous thing for those who are weak owing to
their sex and youth to misuse their own discretion and to suppose that
things are lawful because they are pleasant. "All things are lawful, but
all things are not expedient."(7) No frizzled steward nor shapely foster
brother nor fair and ruddy footman must dangle at your heels. Sometimes the
tone of the mistress is inferred from the dress of the maid. Seek the
society of holy virgins and widows; and, if need arises for holding
converse with men, do not shun having witnesses, and let your conversation
be marked with such confidence that the entry of a third person shall
neither startle you nor make you blush. The face is the mirror of the mind
and a woman's eyes without a word betray the secrets of her heart. I have
lately seen a most miserable scandal traverse the entire East. The lady's
age and style, her dress and mien, the indiscriminate company she kept, her
dainty table and her regal appointments bespoke her the bride of a Nero or
of a Sardanapallus. The scars of others should teach us caution. 'When he
that causeth trouble is scourged the fool will be wiser.'(8) A holy love
knows no impatience. A false rumor is quickly crushed and the after life
passes judgment on that which has gone before. It is not indeed possible
that any one should come to the end of life's race without suffering from
calumny; the wicked find it a consolation to carp at the good, supposing
the guilt of sin to be less, in proportion as the number of those who
commit it is greater. Still a fire of straw quickly dies out and a
spreading flame soon expires if fuel to it be wanting. Whether the report
which prevailed a year ago was true or false, when once the sin ceases, the
scandal also will cease. I do not say this because I fear anything wrong in
your case but because, owing to my deep affection for you, there is no
safety that I do not fear.(1) Oh! that you could see your sister(2) and
that it might be yours to hear the eloquence of her holy lips and to behold
the mighty spirit which animates her diminutive frame. You might hear the
whole contents of the old and new testaments come bubbling up out of her
heart. Fasting is her sport, and prayer she makes her pastime. Like Miriam
after the drowning Pharaoh she takes up her timbrel and sings to the virgin
choir, "Let us sing to the Lord for He hath triumphed gloriously; the horse
and his rider hath he thrown into the sea."(3) She teaches her companions
to be music girls but music girls for Christ, to be luteplayers but
luteplayers for the Saviour. In this occupation she passes both day and
night and with oil ready to put in the lamps she waits the coming of the
Bridegroom.(4) Do you therefore imitate your kinswoman. Let Rome have in
you what a grander city than Rome, I mean Bethlehem, has in her.
14. You have wealth and can easily therefore supply food to those who
want it. Let virtue consume what was provided for self-indulgence; one who
means to despise matrimony need fear no degree of want. Have about you
troops of virgins whom you may lead into the king's chamber. Support widows
that you may mingle them as a kind of violets with the virgins' lilies and
the martyrs' roses. Such are the garlands you must weave for Christ in
place of that crown l of thorns(5) in which he bore the sins of the world.
Let your most noble father thus find in you his joy and support, let him
learn from his daughter the lessons he used to learn from his wife. His
hair is already gray, his knees tremble, his teeth fall out, his brow is
furrowed through years, death is nigh even at the doors, the pyre is all
but laid out hard by. Whether we like it or not, we grow old. Let him
provide for himself the provision which is needful for his long journey.
Let him take with him what otherwise be must unwillingly leave behind, nay
let him send before him to heaven what if he declines it, will be
appropriated by earth.
15. Young widows, of whom some "are already turned aside after Satan,
when they have begun to wax wanton against Christ "(1) and wish to marry,
generally make such excuses as these. "My little patrimony is daily
decreasing, the property which I have inherited is being squandered, a
servant has spoken insultingly to me, a maid has neglected my orders. Who
will appear for me before the authorities? Who will be responsible for the
rents of my estates?(2) Who will see to the education of my children, and
to the bringing up of my slaves?" Thus, shameful to say, they put that
forward as a reason for marrying again, which alone should deter them from
doing so. For by marrying again a mother places over her sons not a
guardian but a foe, not a father but a tyrant. Inflamed by her passions she
forgets the fruit of her womb, and among the children who know nothing of
their sad fate the lately weeping widow dresses herself once more as a
bride. Why these excuses about your property and the insolence of slaves?
Confess the shameful truth. No woman marries to avoid cohabiting with a
husband. At least, if passion is not your motive, it is mere madness to
play the harlot just to increase wealth. You do but purchase a paltry and
passing gain at the price of a grace which is precious and eternal! If you
have children already, why do you want to marry? If you have none, why do
you not fear a recurrence of your former sterility? Why do you put an
uncertain gain before a certain loss of self-respect?
A marriage-settlement is made in your favour to-day but in a short time
you will be constrained to make your will. Your husband will feign sickness
and will do for you what he wants you to do for him. Yet he is sure to live
and you are sure to die. Or if it happens that you have sons by the second
husband, domestic strife is certain to result and intestine disputes. You
will not be allowed to love your first children, nor to look kindly on
those to whom you have yourself given birth. You will have to give them
their food secretly; yet even so your present husband will bear a grudge
against your previous one and, unless you hate your sons, he will think
that you still love their father. But your husband have may issue by a
former wife. If so when he takes you to his home, though you should be the
kindest person in the world, all the commonplaces of rhetoricians and
declamations of comic poets and writers of mimes will be hurled at you as a
cruel stepmother. If your stepson fall sick or have a headache you will be
calumniated as a poisoner. If you refuse him food, you will be cruel, while
if you give it, you will be held to have bewitched him. I ask you what
benefit has a second marriage to confer great enough to compensate for
these evils?
16. Do we wish to know what widows ought to be? Let us read the gospel
according to Luke. "There was one Anna," he says, "a prophetess, the
daughter of Phanuel of the tribe of Aser."(1) The meaning of the name Anna
is grace. Phanuel is in our tongue the face of God. Aser may be translated
either as blessedness or as wealth. From her youth up to the age of
fourscore and four years she had borne the burden of widowhood, not
departing from the temple and giving herself to fastings and prayers night
and day; therefore she earned spiritual grace, received the title 'daughter
of the face of God,'(2) and obtained a share in the ' blessedness and
wealth '(3) which belonged to her ancestry. Let us recall to mind the widow
of Zarephath(4) who thought more of satisfying Elijah's hunger than of
preserving her own life and that of her son. Though she believed that she
and he must die that very night unless they had food, she determined that
her guest should survive. She preferred to sacrifice her life rather than
to neglect the duty of almsgiving. In her handful of meal she found the
seed from which she was to reap a harvest sent her by the Lord. She sows
her meal and lo! a cruse of oil comes from it. In the land of Judah grain
was scarce for the corn of wheat had died there;(5) but in the house of a
heathen widow oil flowed in streams. In the book of Judith--if any one is
of opinion that it should be received as canonical--we read of a widow
wasted with fasting and wearing the sombre garb of a mourner, whose outward
squalor indicated not so much the regret which she felt for her dead
husband as the temper(6) in which she looked forward to the coming of the
Bridegroom. I see her hand armed with the sword and stained with blood. I
recognize the head of Holofernes which she has carried away from the camp
of the enemy. Here a woman vanquishes men, and chastity beheads lust.
Quickly changing her garb, she puts on once more in the hour of victory her
own mean dress finer than all the splendours of the world.(7)
17. Some from a misapprehension number Deborah among the widows, and
suppose that Barak the leader of the army is her son, though the scripture
tells a different story. I will mention her here because she was a
prophetess and is reckoned among the judges, and again because she might
have said with the psalmist:--"How sweet are thy words unto my taste! yea
sweeter than honey to my mouth."(1) Well was she called the bee(2) for she
fed on the flowers of scripture, was enveloped with the fragrance of the
Holy Spirit, and gathered into one with prophetic lips the sweet juices of
the nectar. Then there is Naomi, in Greek parakeklhme'nh(3) or she who is
consoled, who, when her husband and her children died abroad, carried her
chastity back home and, being supported on the road by its aid, kept with
her her Moabitish daughter-in-law, that in her the prophecy of Isaiah(4)
might find a fulfilment. "Send out the lamb, O Lord, to rule over the land
from the rock of the desert to the mount of the daughter of Zion."(5) I
pass on to the widow in the gospel who, though she was but a poor widow was
yet richer than all the people of Israel.(6) She had but a grain of mustard
seed, but she put her leaven in three measures of flour; and, combining her
confession of the Father and of the Son with the grace of the Holy Spirit,
she cast her two mites into the treasury. All the substance that she had,
her entire possessions, she offered in the two testaments of her faith.
These are the two seraphim which glorify the Trinity with threefold song(7)
and are stored among the treasures of the church. They also form the legs
of the tongs by which the live coal is caught up to purge the sinner's
lips.(8)
18. But why should I recall instances from history and bring from books
types of saintly women, when in your own city you have many before your
eyes whose example you may well imitate? I shall not recount their merits
here lest I should seem to flatter them. It will suffice to mention the
saintly Marcella(9) who, while she is true to the claims of her birth and
station, has set before us a life which is worthy of the gospel. Anna
"lived with an husband seven years from her virginity";(10) Marcella lived
with one for seven months. Anna looked for the coming of Christ; Marcella
holds fast the Lord whom Anna received in her arms. Anna sang His praise
when He was still a wailing infant; Marcella proclaims His glory now that
He has won His triumph. Anna spoke of Him to all those who waited for the
redemption of Israel; Marcella cries out with the nations of the redeemed:
"A brother redeemeth not, yet a man shall redeem,"(1) and from another
psalm: "A man was born in her, and the Highest Himself hath established
her."(2)
About two years ago, as I well remember, I published a book against
Jovinian in which by the authority of scripture I crushed the objections
raised on the other side on account of the apostle's concession of second
marriages. It is unnecessary that I should repeat my arguments afresh here,
as you can find them all in this treatise. That I may not exceed the limits
of a letter, I will only give you this one last piece of advice. Think
every day that you must die, and you will then never think of marrying
again.
LETTER LV: TO AMANDUS.
A very interesting letter. Amandus a presbyter of Burdigala (Bourdeaux) had
written to Jerome for an explanation of three passages of scripture, viz.
Matt. vi. 34, 1 Cor. vi. 18, 1 Cor. xv. 25, 26, and had in the same letter
on behalf of a 'sister' (supposd by Thierry to have been Fabiola) put the
following question: 'Can a woman who has divorced her first husband on
account of his vices and who has during his lifetime under compulsion
married again, communicate with the Church without first doing penance?
Jerome in his reply gives the explanations asked for but answers the
farther question, that concerning the 'sister,' with an emphatic negative.
Written about the year 394 A. D.
1. A short letter does not admit of long explanations; compressing much
matter into a small space it can only give a few words to topics which
suggest many thoughts. You ask me what is the meaning of the passage in the
gospel according to Matthew, "take no thought for the morrow. Sufficient
unto the day is the evil thereof."(3) In the holy scriptures "the morrow"
signifies the time to come. Thus in Genesis Jacob says: "So shall my
righteousness answer for me to-morrow."(4) Again when the two tribes of
Reuben and Gad and the half tribe of Manasseh had built an altar and when
all Israel had sent to them an embassy, they made answer to Phinehas the
high priest that they had built the altar lest "to-morrow" it might be said
to their children, "ye have no part in the Lord."(5) You may find many
similar passages in the old instrument.(1) While then Christ forbids us to
take thought for things future, He has allowed us to do so for things
present, knowing as He does the frailty of our mortal condition. His
remaining words "sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof" are to be
understood as meaning that it is sufficient for us to think of the present
troubles of this life. Why need we extend our thoughts to contingencies, to
objects which we either cannot obtain or else having obtained must soon
relinquish? The Greek word kaki'a rendered in the Latin version
"wickedness" has two distinct meanings, wickedness and tribulation, which
latter the Greek call kakwsi'n and in this passage "tribulation" would be a
better rendering than "wickedness." But if any one demurs to this and
insists that the word kaki'a must mean "wickedness" and not "tribulation"
or "trouble," the meaning must be the same as in the words "the whole world
lieth in wickedness"(2) and as in the Lord's prayer in the clause, "deliver
us from evil:"(3) the purport of the passage will then be that our present
conflict with the wickedness of this world should be enough for us.
2. Secondly, you ask me concerning the passage in the first epistle of
the blessed apostle Paul to the Corinthians where he says: 'every sin that
a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth
against his own body."(4) Let us go back a little farther and read on until
we come to these words, for we must not seek to learn the whole meaning of
the section, from the concluding parts of it, or, if I may so say, from I
the tail of the chapter.(5) "The body is not for fornication but for the
Lord; and the Lord for the body. And God hath both raised up the Lord and
will also raise up us [with Him] by his own power. Know ye not that your
bodies are the members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ,
and make them the members of an harlot? God forbid. What! Know ye not that
he which is joined to an harlot is one body? For two, saith he, shall be
one flesh. But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit. Flee
fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that
committeth fornication sinneth against his own body,"(6) and so on. The
holy apostle has been arguing against excess and has just before said
"meats for the belly and the belly for meats: but God shall destroy both it
and them."(1) Now he comes to treat of fornication. For excess in eating is
the mother of lust; a belly that is distended with food and saturated with
draughts of wine is sure to lead to sensual passion. As has been elsewhere
said "the arrangement of man's organs suggests the course of his vices."(2)
Accordingly all such sins as theft, manslaughter, pillage, perjury, and the
like can be repented of after they have been committed; and, however much
interest may tempt him, conscience always smites the offender. It is only
lust and sensual pleasure that in the very hour of penitence undergo once
more the temptations of the past, the itch of the flesh, and the
allurements of sin; so that the very thought which we bestow on the
correction of such transgressions becomes in itself a new source of sin. Or
to put the matter in a different light: other sins are outside of us; and
whatever we do we do against others. But fornication defiles the fornicator
both in conscience and body; and in accordance with the words of the Lord,
"for this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to
his wife; and they twain shall be one flesh,"(3) he too becomes one body
with a harlot and sins against his own body by making what is the temple of
Christ the body of a harlot. Not to pass over any suggestion of the Greek
commentators, I shall give you one more explanation. It is one thing, they
say, to sin with the body, and another to sin in the body. Theft,
manslaughter, and all other sins except fornication we commit with our
hands outside ourselves. Fornication alone we commit inside ourselves in
our bodies and not with our bodies upon others. The preposition 'with'
denotes the instrument used in sinning, while the preposition 'in'
signifies the sphere of the passion is ourselves. Some again give this
explanation that according to the scripture a man's body is his wife and
that when a man commits fornication he is said to sin against his own body
that is against his wife inasmuch as he defiles her by his own fornication
and causes her though herself free from sin to become a sinner through her
intercourse with him.
3. I find joined to your letter of inquiries a short paper containing
the following words: "ask him,(that is me,) whether a woman who has left
her husband on the ground that he is an adulterer and sodomite and has
found herself compelled to take another may in the lifetime of him whom she
first left be in communion with the church without doing penance for her
fault." As I read the case put I recall the verse they make excuses for
their sins. We are all human and all indulgent to our own faults; and what
our own will leads us to do we attribute to a necessity of nature. It is as
though a young man were to say, "I am over-borne by my body, the glow of
nature kindles my passions, the structure of my frame and its reproductive
organs call for sexual intercourse." Or again a murderer might say, "I was
in want, I stood in need of food, I had nothing to cover me. If I shed the
blood of another, it was to save myself from dying of cold and hunger."
Tell the sister, therefore, who thus enquires of me concerning her
condition, not my sentence but that of the apostle. "Know ye not, brethren
(for I speak to them that know the law,) how that the law hath dominion
over a man as long as he liveth? For the woman which hath an husband is
bound by the law to her husband, so long as he liveth; but if the husband
be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband. So then, if, while her
husband liveth, she be married to another man, she shall be called an
adulteress."(2) And in another place: "the wife is bound by the law as long
as her husband liveth; but if her husband be dead, she is at liberty to be
married to whom she will; only in the Lord."(3) The apostle has thus cut
away every plea and has clearly declared that, if a woman marries again
while her husband is living, she is an adulteress. You must not speak to me
of the violence of a ravisher, a mother's pleading, a father's bidding, the
influence of relatives, the insolence and the intrigues of servants,
household losses. A husband may be an adulterer or a sodomite, he may be
stained with every crime and may have been left by his wife because of his
sins; yet he is still her husband and, so long as he lives, she may not
marry another. The apostle does not promulgate this decree on his own
authority but on that of Christ who speaks in him. For he has followed the
words of Christ in the gospel: "whosoever shall put away his wife, saving
for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever
shall marry her that is divorced, committeth adultery."(4) Mark what he
says: "whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery."
Whether she has put away her husband or her husband her, the man who
marries her is still an adulterer. Wherefore the apostles seeing how heavy
the yoke of marriage was thus made said to Him: "if the case of the man be
so with his wife, it is not good to marry," and the Lord replied, "he that
is able to receive it, let him receive it." And immediately by the instance
of the three eunuchs he shows the blessedness of virginity which is bound
by no carnal tie.(1)
4. I have not been able quite to determine what it is that she means by
the words "has found herself compelled" to marry again. What is this
compulsion of which she speaks? Was she overborne by a crowd and ravished
against her will? If so, why has she not, thus victimized, subsequently put
away her ravisher? Let her read the books of Moses and she will find that
if violence is offered to a betrothed virgin in a city and she does not cry
out, she is punished as an adulteress: but if she is forced in the field,
she is innocent of sin and her ravisher alone is amenable to the laws.(2)
Therefore if your sister, who, as she says, has been forced into a second
union, wishes to receive the body of Christ and not to be accounted an
adulteress, let her do penance; so far at least as from the time she begins
to repent to have no farther intercourse with that second husband who ought
to be called not a husband but an adulterer. If this seems hard to her and
if she cannot leave one whom she has once loved and will not prefer the
Lord to sensual pleasure, let her hear the declaration of the apostle: "ye
cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of devils: ye cannot be
partakers of the Lord's table and of the table of devils,"(3) and in
another place: "what communion hath light with darkness? and what concord
hath Christ with Belial?"(4) What I am about to say may sound novel but
after all it is not new but old for it is supported by the witness of the
old testament. If she leaves her second husband and desires to be
reconciled with her first, she cannot be so now; for it is written in
Deuteronomy: "When a man hath taken a wife, and married her, and it come to
pass that she find no favour in his eyes, because he hath found some
uncleanness in her; then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give
it in her hand, and send her out of his house. And when she is departed out
of his house, she may go and be another man's wife. And if the latter
husband hate her, and write her a bill of divorcement and giveth it in her
hand, and sendeth her out of his house; or if the latter husband die which
took her to be his wife; her former husband, which sent her away may not
take her again to be his wife, after that she is defiled; for that is
abomination before the Lord: and thou shalt not cause the land to sin,
which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance."(6) Wherefore, I
beseech you, do your best to comfort her and to urge her to seek salvation.
Diseased flesh calls for the knife and the searing-iron. The wound is to
blame and not the healing art, if with a cruelty that is really kindness a
physician to spare does not spare, and to be merciful is cruel.(1)
5. Your third and last question relates to the passage in the same
epistle where the apostle in discussing the resurrection, comes to the
words: "for he must reign, till he hath put all things under his feet. The
last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. For he hath put all things
under his feet. But when he saith, all things are put under him, it is
manifest that he is excepted, which did put all things under him. And when
all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be
subject unto him that put all things under him that God may be all in
all."(2) I am surprised that you have resolved to question me about this
passage when that reverend man, Hilary, bishop of Poictiers, has occupied
the eleventh book of his treatise against the Arians with a full
examination and explanation of it. Yet I may at least say a few words. The
chief stumbling-block in the passage is that the Son is said to be subject
to the Father. Now which is the more shameful and humiliating, to be
subject to the Father (often a mark of loving devotion as in the psalm
"truly my soul is subject unto God"(3)) or to be crucified and made the
curse of the cross? For "cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree."(4) If
Christ then for our sakes was made a curse that He might deliver us from
the curse of the law, are you surprised that lie is also for our sakes
subject to the Father to make us too subject to Him as He says in the
gospel: "No man cometh unto the Father but by me,"(5) and "I, if I be
lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me."(6) Christ then is
subject to the Father in the faithful; for all believers, nay the whole
human race, are accounted members of His body. But in unbelievers, that is
in Jews, heathens, and heretics, He is said to be not subject; for these
members of His body are not subject to the faith. But in the end of the
world when all His members shall see Christ, that is their own body,
reigning, they also shall be made subject to Christ, that is to their own
body, that the whole of Christ's body may be subject unto God and the
Father, and that God may be all in all. He does not say "that the Father
may be all in all" but that "God" may be, a title which properly belongs to
the Trinity and may be referred not only to the Father but also to the Son
and to the Holy Ghost. His meaning therefore is "that humanity may be
subject to the Godhead." By humanity we here intend not that gentleness and
kindness which the Greeks call philanthropy but the whole human race.
Moreover when he says "that God may be all in all," it is to be taken in
this sense. At present our Lord and Saviour is not all in all, but only a
part in each of us. For instance He is wisdom in Solomon, generosity in
David, patience in Job, knowledge of things to come in Daniel faith in
Peter, zeal in Phinehas and Paul, virginity in John, and other virtues in
others. But when the end of all things shall come, then shall He be all in
all, for then the saints shall severally possess all the virtues and all
will possess Christ in His entirety.
LETTER LVI: FROM AUGUSTINE.
Augustine's first letter to Jerome (printed in his correspondence in this
Library as Letter XXVIII.): through a series of accidents it was not
delivered until nine years after it had been written. In it Augustine
comments on Jerome's new Latin version of the O. T. and advises him in his
future labours to adhere more closely to the text of the LXX. He also
discusses Jerome's account (in his commentary on the epistle to the
Galatians) of the quarrel between Paul and Peter at Antioch. This according
to Jerome was not a real misunderstanding but only one artificially 'got
up' to put clearly before the Church the mischief of Christians conforming
to the now obsolete Mosaic Law. Augustine strongly controverts this view
and maintains that it is fatal to the veracity and authority claimed felt
scripture. Written from Hippo about the year 394 A. D.
LETTER LVII: TO PAMMACHIUS ON THE BEST METHOD OF TRANSLATING.
Written to Pammachius (for whom see Letter LXVI.) in A. D. 395. In the
previous year Jerome had rendered into Latin Letter LI. (from Epiphanius to
John of Jerusalem) under circumstances which he here describes (# 2). His
version soon became public and incurred severe criticism from some person
not named by Jerome but supposed by him to have been instigated by Rufinus
(# 12). Charged with having falsified his original he now repudiates the
charge and defends his method of translation ("to give sense for sense and
not word for word" (# 5) by an appeal to the practice of classical (# 5),
ecclesiastical (# 6), and N. T. (# 7-10) writers.
When at a subsequent period Rufinus gave to the world what was in Jerome's
opinion a misleading version of Origen's First Principles, he appealed to
this letter as giving him ample warranty for what he had done. See Letters
LXXX, and LXXXI, and Rufinus' Preface to the peri' Archw^n in Vol. iii. of
this series.
1. The apostle Paul when he appeared before King Agrippa to answer the
charges, which were brought against him, wishing to use language
intelligible to his hearers and confident of the success of his cause,
began by congratulating himself in these words: "I think myself happy, King
Agrippa, because I shall answer for myself this day before thee touching
all the things whereof I am accused by the Jews: especially because thou
art expert in all customs and questions which are among the Jews."(1) He
had read the saying of Jesus:(2) "Well is him that speaketh in the ears of
them that will hear; "(3) and he knew that a pleader only succeeds in
proportion as he impresses his judge. On this occasion I too think myself
happy that learned ears will bear my defence. For a rash tongue charges me
with ignorance or falsehood; it alleges that in translating another man's
letter I have made mistakes through incapacity or carelessness; it convicts
me of either an involuntary error or a deliberate offence. And test it
should happen that my accuser--encouraged by a volubility which stops at
nothing and by an impunity which arrogates to itself an unlimited license--
should accuse me as he has already done our father (Pope) Epiphanius; I
send this letter to inform you--and through yon others who think me worthy
of their regard--of the true order of the facts. 2. About two years ago the
aforesaid Pope Epiphanius sent a letter(4) to Bishop John, first finding
fault with him as regarded some of his opinions and then mildly calling him
to penitence. Such was the repute of the writer or else the elegance of the
letter that all Palestine fought for copies of it. Now there was in our
monastery a man of no small estimation in his country, Eusebius of Cremona,
who, when he found that this letter was in everybody's mouth and that the
ignorant and the educated alike admired it for its teaching and for the
purity of its style, set to work to beg me to translate it for him into
Latin and at the same time to simplify tile argument so that he might more
readily understand it; for he was himself altogether unacquainted with the
Greek language. I consented to his request and calling to my aid a
secretary speedily dictated my version, briefly marking on the side of the
page the contents of the several chapters. The fact is that he asked me to
do this merely for himself, and I requested of him in return to keep his
copy private and not too readily to circulate it. A year and six months
went by, and then the aforesaid translation found its way by a novel
stratagem from his desk to Jerusalem. For a pretended monk--either bribed
as there is much reason to believe or actuated by malice of his own as his
tempter vainly tries to convince us--shewed himself a second Judas by
robbing Eusebius of his literary property and gave to the adversary an
occasion of railing(1) against me. They tell the unlearned that I have
falsified the original, that I have not rendered word for word, that I have
put 'dear friend' in place of 'honourable sir,' and more shameful still!
that I have cut down my translation by omitting the words aidesimw^tate
Pa'ppa.(2) These and similar trifles form the substance of the charges
brought against me.
3. At the outset before I defend my version I wish to ask those persons
who confound wisdom with cunning, some few questions. Where did you get
your copy of the letter? Who gave it to you? How have you the effrontery to
bring forward what you have procured by fraud? What place of safety will be
left us if we cannot conceal our secrets even within our own walls and our
own writing-desks? Were I to press such a charge against you before a legal
tribunal, I could make you amenable to the laws which even in fiscal cases
appoint penalties for meddlesome informers and condemn the traitor even
while they accept his treachery. For though they welcome the profit which
the information gives them, they disapprove the motive which actuates the
informer. A little while ago a man of consular rank named Hesychius
(against whom the patriarch Gamaliel waged an implacable war) was condemned
to death by the emperor Theodosius simply because he had laid hold of
imperial papers through a secretary whom he had tempted. We read also in
old histories(3) that the schoolmaster who betrayed the children of the
Faliscans was sent back to his boys and handed over to them in bonds, the
Roman people refusing to accept a dishonourable victory. When Pyrrhus king
of Epirus was lying in his camp ill from the effects of a wound, his
physician offered to poison him, but Fabricius thinking it shame that the
king should die by treachery sent the traitor back in chains to his master,
refusing to sanction crime even when its victim was an enemy.(4) A
principle which the laws uphold, which is maintained by enemies, which
warfare and the sword fail to violate, has hitherto been held unquestioned
among the monks and priests of Christ. And can any one of them presume now,
knitting his brow and snapping his fingers,(5) to spend his breath in
saving: "What if he did use bribes or other inducements! he did what suited
his purpose." A strange plea truly to defend a fraud as though robbers,
thieves, and pirates did not do the same. Certainly, when Annas and
Caiaphas led hapless Judas astray, they only did what they believed to be
expedient for themselves.
4. Suppose that I wish to write down in my note books this or that
silly trifle, or to make comments upon the scriptures, to retort upon my
calumniators, to digest my wrath, to practise myself in the use of
commonplaces and to stow away sharp shafts for the day of battle. So long
as I do not publish my thoughts, they are only unkind words not matter for
a charge of libel; in fact they are not even unkind words for the public
ear never hears them. You(1) may bribe my slaves and tamper with my clients
You may, as the fable has it, penetrate by means of your gold to the
chamber of Danae;(2) and then, dissembling what you have done, you may call
me a falsifier; but, if you do so, you will have to plead guilty yourself
to a worse charge than any that you can bring against me. One man inveighs
against you as a heretic, another as a perverter of doctrine. You are
silent yourself; you do not venture to answer; you assail the translator;
you cavil about syllables and you fancy your defence complete if your
calumnies provoke no reply. Suppose that I have made a mistake or an
omission in my rendering. Your whole case turns upon this; this is the
defence which you offer to your accusers. Are you no heretic because I am a
bad translator? Mind, I do not say that I know you to be a heretic; I leave
such knowledge to your accuser, to him who wrote the letter:(3) what I do
say is that it is the height of folly for you when you are accused by one
man to attack another, and when you are covered with wounds yourself to
seek comfort by wounding one who is still quiescent and unaggressive.
5. In the above remarks I have assumed that i have made alterations in
the letter and that a simple translation may contain errors though not
wilful ones. As, however the letter itself shews that no changes have been
made in the sense, that nothing has been added, and that no doctrine has
been foisted into it, "obviously their object is understanding to
understand nothing;"(4) and while they desire to arraign another's want of
skill, they betray their own. For I myself not only admit but freely
proclaim that in translating from the Greek (except in the case of the holy
scriptures where even the order of the words is a mystery) I render sense
for sense and not word for word. For this course I have the authority of
Tully who has so translated the Protagoras of Plato, the Oeconomicus of
Xenophon, and the two beautiful orations(1) which Aeschines and Demosthenes
delivered one against the other. What omissions, additions, and alterations
he has made substituting the idioms of his own for those of another tongue,
this is not the time to say. I am satisfied to quote the authority of the
translator who has spoken as follows in a prologue(2) prefixed to the
orations. "I have thought it right to embrace a labour which though not
necessary for myself will prove useful to those who study. I have
translated the noblest speeches of the two most eloquent of the Attic
orators, the speeches which Aeschines and Demosthenes delivered one against
the other; but I have rendered them not as a translator but as an orator,
keeping the sense but altering the form by adapting both the metaphors and
the words to suit our own idiom. I have not deemed it necessary to render
word for word but I have reproduced the general style and emphasis. I have
not supposed myself bound to pay the words out one by one to the reader but
only to give him an equivalent in value." Again at the close of his task he
says, "I shall be well satisfied if my rendering is found, as I trust it
will be, true to this standard. In making it I have utilized all the
excellences of the originals, I mean the sentiments, the forms of
expression and the arrangement of the topics, while I have followed the
actual wording only so far as I could do so without offending our notions
of taste. If all that I have written is not to be found in the Greek, I
have at any rate striven to make it correspond with it." Horace too, an
acute and learned writer, in his Art of Poetry gives the same advice to the
skilled translator:--
And care not thou with over anxious thought
To render word for word.(3)
Terence has translated Menander; Plautus and Caecilius the old comic
poets.(4) Do they ever stick at words? Do they not rather in their versions
think first of preserving the beauty and charm of their originals? What men
like you call fidelity in transcription, the learned term pestilent
minuteness.(5) Such were my teachers about twenty years ago; and even
then(6) I was the victim of a similar error to that which is now imputed to
me, though indeed I never imagined that you would charge me with it. In
translating the Chronicle of Eusebius of Caesarea into Latin, I made among
others the following prefatory observations: "It is difficult in following
lines laid down by others not sometimes to diverge from them, and it is
hard to preserve in a translation the charm of expressions which in another
language are most felicitous Each particular word conveys a meaning of its
own, and possibly I have no equivalent by which to render it, and I make a
circuit to reach my goal, I have to go many miles to cover a short
distance.(1) To these difficulties must be added the windings of hyperbata,
differences in the use of cases, divergencies of metaphor; and last of all
the peculiar and if I may so call it, inbred character of the language. If
I render word for word, the result will sound uncouth, and if compelled by
necessity I alter anything in the order or wording, I shall seem to have
departed from the function of a translator."(2) And after a long discussion
which it would be tedious to follow out here, I added what follows:--"If
any one imagines that translation does not impair the charm of style, let
him render Homer word for word into Latin, nay I will go farther still and
say, let him render it into Latin prose, and the result will be that the
order of the words will seem ridiculous and the most eloquent of poets
scarcely articulate."(3)
6. In quoting my own writings my only object has been to prove that
from my youth up I at least have always aimed at rendering sense not words,
but if such authority as they supply is deemed insufficient, read and
consider the short preface dealing with this matter which occurs in a book
narrating the life of the blessed Antony.(4) "A literal translation from
one language into another obscures the sense; the exuberance of the growth
lessens the yield. For while one's diction is enslaved to cases and
metaphors, it has to explain by tedious circumlocutions what a few words
would otherwise have sufficed to make plain. I have tried to avoid this
error in the translation which at your request I have made of the story of
the blessed Antony. My version always preserves the sense although it does
not invariably keep the words of the original. Leave others to catch at
syllables and letters, do you for your part look for the meaning." Time
would fail me were I to unfold the testimonies of all who have translated
only according to the sense. It is sufficient for the present to name
Hilary the confessor(5) who has turned some homilies on Job and several
treatises on the Psalms from Greek into Latin; yet has not bound himself to
the drowsiness of the letter or fettered himself by the stale literalism of
inadequate culture. Like a conqueror he has led away captive into his own
tongue the meaning of his originals.
7. That secular and church writers should have adopted this line need
not surprise us when we consider that the translators of the Septuagint,(1)
the evangelists, and the apostles, have done the same in dealing with the
sacred writings. We read in Mark(2) of the Lord saying Talitha cumi and it
is immediately added "which is interpreted, Damsel, I say unto thee,
arise." The evangelist may he charged with falsehood for having added the
words "I say unto thee" for the Hebrew is only "Damsel arise." To emphasize
this and to give the impression of one calling and commanding he has added
"I say unto thee." Again in Matthew(3) when the thirty pieces of silver are
returned by the traitor Judas and the potter's field is purchased with
them, it is written:--"Then was fulfilled that which was spoken of by
Jeremy the prophet, saying, "And they took the thirty pieces of silver the
price of him that was valued which(4) they of the children of Israel did
value, and gave them for the potter's field, as the Lord appointed me."
This passage is not found in Jeremiah at all but in Zechariah, in quite
different words and an altogether different order. In fact the Vulgate
renders it as follows:--"And I will say unto them, If it is good in your
sight, give ye me a price or refuse it: So they weighed for my price thirty
pieces of silver. And the Lord said unto me, Put them into the melting
furnace and consider if it is tried as I have been tried by them. And I
took the thirty pieces of silver and cast them into the house of the
Lord."(5) It is evident that the rendering of the Septuagint differs widely
from the quotation of the evangelist. In the Hebrew also, though the sense
is the same, the words are quite different and differently arranged. It
says: "And I said unto them, If ye think good, give me my price; and, if
not, forbear. So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver. And the
Lord said unto me, Cast it unto the potter;(6) a goodly price that I was
priced at of them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver and cast them to
the potter in the house of the Lord."(7) They may accuse the apostle of
falsifying his version seeing that it agrees neither with the Hebrew nor
with the translators of the Septuagint: and worse than this, they may say
that he has mistaken the author's name putting down Jeremiah when it should
be Zechariah. Far be it from us to speak thus of a follower(8) of Christ,
who made it his care to formulate dogmas rather than to hunt for words and
syllables. To take another instance from Zechariah, the evangelist john
quotes from the Hebrew, "They shall look on him whom they pierced,"(1) for
which we read in the Septuagint, "And they shall look upon me because they
have mocked me," and in the Latin version, "And they shall look upon me for
the things which they have mocked or insulted." Here the evangelist, the
Septuagint, and our own version(2) all differ; yet the divergence of
language is atoned by oneness of spirit. In Matthew again we read of the
Lord preaching flight to the apostles and confirming His counsel with a
passage from Zechariah. "It is written," he says, "I will smite the
shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad."(3) But in
the Septuagint and in the Hebrew it reads differently, for it is not God
who speaks, as the evangelist makes out, but the prophet who appeals to God
the Father saying:--"Smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered."
In this instance according to my judgment--and I have some careful critics
with me--the evangelist is guilty of a fault in presuming to ascribe to God
what are the words of the prophet. Again the same evangelist writes that at
the warning of an angel Joseph took the young child and his mother and went
into Egypt and remained there till the death of Herod; "that it might be
fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet saying, Out of Egypt
have I called my son."(4) The Latin manuscripts do not so give the passage,
but in Hosea(5) the true Hebrew text has the following:--"When Israel was a
child then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt." Which the
Septuagint renders thus:--"When Israel was a child then I loved him, and
called his sons out of Egypt." Are they(6) altogether to be rejected
because they have given another turn to a passage which refers primarily to
the mystery of Christ? Or should we not rather pardon the shortcomings of
the translators on the score of their human frailty according to the saying
of James, "In many things we offend all. If any man offend not in word the
same is a perfect man and able also to bridle the whole body."(7) Once more
it is written in the pages of the same evangelist, "And he came and dwelt
in a city called Nazareth: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by
the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene."(8) Let these word fanciers
and nice critics of all composition tell us where they have read the words;
and if they cannot, let me tell them that they are in Isaiah.(1) For in the
place where we read and translate, "There shall come forth a rod out of the
stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots,"(2) in the Hebrew
idiom it is written thus, "There shall come forth a rod out of the root of
Jesse and a Nazarene shall grow from his root." How can the Septuagint
leave out the word 'Nazarene,' if it is unlawful to substitute one word for
another? It is sacrilege either to conceal or to set at naught a mystery.
8. Let us pass on to other passages, for the brief limits of a letter
do not suffer us to dwell too long on any one point. The same Matthew
says:--"Now all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken
of the Lord by the prophet saying. Behold a virgin shall be with child and
shall bring forth a son and they shall call his name Emmanuel."(3) The
rendering of the Septuagint is, "Behold a virgin shall receive seed and
shall bring forth a son, and ye shall call his name Emmanuel." If people
cavil at words, obviously 'to receive seed' is not the exact equivalent of
'to be with child,' and 'ye shall call' differs from! 'they shall call.'
Moreover in the Hebrew we read thus, "Behold a virgin shall conceive and
bear a son and shall call his name Immanuel."(4) Ahaz shall not call him so
for he was convicted of want of faith, nor the Jews for they were destined
to deny him, but she who is to conceive him, and bear him, the virgin
herself. In the same evangelist we read that Herod was troubled at the
coming of the Magi and that gathering together the scribes and the priests
he demanded of them where Christ should be born and that they answered him,
"In Bethlehem of Judaea: for thus it is written by the prophet; And thou
Bethlehem in the land of Judah art not the least among the princes of
Judah, for out of thee shall come a governour that shall rule my people
Israel."(5) In the Vulgate(6) this passage appears as follows:--"And thou
Bethlehem, the house of Ephratah, art small to be among the thousands of
Judah, yet one shall come out of thee for me to be a prince in Israel." You
will be more surprised still at the difference in words and order between
Matthew and the Septuagint if you look at the Hebrew which runs thus:--"But
thou Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of
Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in
Israel."(7) Consider one by one the words of the evangelist:--"And thou
Bethlehem in the land of Judah." For "the land of Judah" the Hebrew has
"Ephratah" while the Septuagint gives "the house of Ephratah." The
evangelist writes, "art not the least among the princes of Judah." In the
Septuagint this is, "art small to be among the thousands of Judah," while
the Hebrew gives, "though thou be little among the thousands of Judah."
There is a contradiction here--and that not merely verbal-- between the
evangelist and the prophet; for in this place at any rate both Septuagint
and Hebrew agree. The evangelist says that he is not little among the
princes of Judah, while the passage from which he queries says exactly the
opposite of this, "Thou art small indeed and little; but yet out of thee,
small and little as thou art, there shall come forth for me a leader in
Israel," a sentiment in harmony with that of the apostle, "God hath chosen
the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty."(1)
Moreover the last clause "to rule" or "to feed my people Israel" clearly
runs differently in the original.
9. I refer to these passages, not to convict the evangelists of
falsification--a charge worthy only of impious men like Celsus, Porphyry,
and Julian--but to bring home to my critics their own want of knowledge,
and to gain from them such consideration that they may concede to me in the
case of a simple letter what, whether they like it or not, they will have
to concede to the Apostles in the Holy Scriptures. Mark, the disciple of
Peter, begins his gospel thus:--"The beginning of the gospel of Jesus
Christ, as it is written in the prophet Isaiah: Behold I send my messenger
before thy face which shall prepare thy way before thee. The voice of one
crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths
straight."(2) This quotation is made up from two prophets, Malachi that is
to say and Isaiah. For the first part: "Behold I send my messenger before
thy face which shall prepare thy way before thee," occurs at the close of
Malachi.(3) But the second part: "The voice of one crying, etc.," we read
in Isaiah.(4) On what grounds then has Mark in the very beginning of his
book set the words: "As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, Behold I send
my messenger," when, as we have said, it is not written in Isaiah at all,
but in Malachi the last of the twelve prophets? Let ignorant presumption
solve this nice question if it can, and I will ask pardon for being in the
wrong. The same Mark brings before us the Saviour thus addressing the
Pharisees: "Have ye never read what David did when he had need and was an
hungred, he and they that were with him, how he went into the house of God
in the days of Abiathar the highpriest, and did eat the shew-bread which is
not lawful to eat but for the priests?"(1) Now let us turn to the books of
Samuel, or, as they are commonly called, of Kings, and we shall find there
that the high-priest's name was not Abiathar but Ahimelech,(2) the same
that was afterwards put to death with the rest of the priests by Doeg at
the command of Saul.(3) Let us pass on now to the apostle Paul who writes
thus to the Corinthians: "For had they known it, they would not have
crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written, Eye hath not seen nor
ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God
hath prepared for them that love Him."(4) Some writers on this passage
betake themselves to the ravings of the apocryphal books and assert that
the quotation comes from the Revelation of Elijah;(5) whereas the truth is
that it is found in Isaiah according to the Hebrew text: "Since the
beginning of the world men have not heard nor perceived by the ear, neither
hath the eye seen, O God, beside thee what thou hast prepared for them that
wait for thee."(6) The Septuagint has rendered the words quite differently:
"Since the beginning of the world we have not heard, neither have our eyes
seen any God beside thee and thy true works, and thou wilt shew mercy to
them that wait for thee." We see then from what place the quotation is
taken and yet the apostle has not rendered his original word for word, but,
using a paraphrase, he has given the sense in different terms. In his
epistle to the Romans the same apostle quotes these words from Isaiah:
"Behold I lay in Sion a stumbling-stone and rock of offence,"(7) a
rendering which is at variance with the Greek version(8) yet agrees with
the original Hebrew. The Septuagint gives an opposite meaning, "that you
fall not on a stumblingstone nor on a rock of offence." The apostle Peter
agrees with Paul and the Hebrew, writing: "but to them that do not believe,
a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence."(9) From all these passages it
is clear that the apostles and evangelists in translating the old testament
scriptures have sought to give the meaning rather than the words, and that
they have not greatly cared to preserve forms or constructions, so long as
they could make clear the subject to the understanding.
10. Luke the evangelist and companion of apostles describes Christ's
first martyr Stephen as relating what follows in a Jewish assembly. "With
threescore and fifteen souls Jacob went down into Egypt, and died himself,
and our fathers were carried over(1) into Sychem, and laid in the sepulchre
that Abraham bought for a sum of money of the sons of Emmor(2) the father
of Sychem."(3) In Genesis this passage is quite differently given, for it
is Abraham that buys of Ephron the Hittite, the son of Zohar, near Hebron,
for four hundred shekels(4) of silver, a double cave,(5) and the field that
is about it, and that buries in it Sarah his wife. And in the same book we
read that, after his return from Mesopotamia with his wives and his sons,
Jacob pitched his tent before Salem, a city of Shechem which is in the land
of Canaan, and that he dwelt there and "bought a parcel of a field where he
had spread his tent at the band of Hamor, the father of Sychem, for an
hundred lambs,"(6) and that "he erected there an altar and called there
upon the God of Israel."(7) Abraham does not buy the cave from Hamor the
father of Sychem, but from Ephron the son of Zohar, and he is not buried in
Sychem but in Hebron which is corruptly called Arboch. Whereas the twelve
patriarchs are not buried in Arboch but in Sychem, in the field purchased
not by Abraham but by Jacob. I postpone the solution of this delicate
problem to enable those who cavil at me to search and see that in dealing
with the scriptures it is the sense we have to look to and not the words.
In the Hebrew the twenty-second psalm begins with the exact words which the
Lord uttered on the cross: Eli Eli lama azabthani, which means, "My God, my
God, why hast thou forsaken me?"(8) Let my critics tell me why the
Septuagint introduces here the words "look thou upon me." For its rendering
is as follows: "My God, my God, look thou upon me, why hast thou forsaken
me?" They will answer no doubt that no harm is done to the sense by the
addition of a couple of words. Let them acknowledge then that, if in the
haste of dictation I have omitted a few, I have not by so doing endangered
the position of the churches.
11. It would be tedious now to enumerate, what great additions and
omissions the Septuagint has made, and all the passages which in church-
copies are marked with daggers and asterisks. The Jews generally laugh when
they hear our version of this passage of Isaiah, "Blessed is he that hath
seed in Zion and servants in Jerusalem."(9) In Amos also(10) after a
description of self-indulgence(1) there come these words: "They have
thought of these things as halting and not likely to fly," a very
rhetorical sentence quite worthy of Tully. But how shall we deal with the
Hebrew originals in which these passages and others like them are omitted,
passages so numerous that to reproduce them all would require books without
number? The number of the omissions. is shown alike by the asterisks
mentioned above and by my own version when compared by a careful reader
with the old translation.(2) Yet the Septuagint has rightly kept its place
in the churches, either because it is the first of all the versions in
time, made before the coming of Christ, or else because it has been used by
the apostles (only however in places where it does not disagree with the
Hebrews(2)). On the other hand we do right to reject Aquila, the proselyte
and controversial translator, who has striven to translate not words only
but their etymologies as well. Who could accept as renderings of "corn and
wine and oil"(3) such words as chei^ma opwrismo's, stilpno'ths, or, as we
might say, 'pouring,' and 'fruitgathering,' and 'shining'? or, because
Hebrew has in addition to the article other prefixes(5) as well, he must
with an unhappy pedantry translate syllable by, syllable and letter, by
letter thus: su`n to`n ourano`n kai` su`n th`n gh'n, a construction which
neither Greek nor Latin admits lion which neither Greek nor Latin admits
of,(6) as many passages in our own writers shew. How many are the phrases
charming in Greek which, if rendered word for word, do not sound well in
Latin, and again how many there are that are pleasing to us in Latin, but
which--assuming the order of the words not to be altered--would not please
in Greek.
12. But to pass by this limitless field of discussion and to shew you,
most Christian of nobles, and most noble of Christians, what is the kind of
falsification which is censured in my translation, I will set before you
the opening words of the letter in the Greek original and as rendered by
me, that from one count in the indictment you may form an opinion of all.
The letter begins "E'dei hhma^s, aga'phte, mh' th(i)^ oih'sei tw^n klh'rwn
phe'resthai which I remember to have rendered as follows: "Dearly beloved,
we ought not to misuse our position as ministers to gratify our pride." See
there, they cry, what a number of falsehoods in a single line! In the first
place agaphto's means 'loved,' not 'dearly beloved.' Then oi'hsis means
'estimate,' not 'pride,' for this and not oidh^ma is the word used. Oidh^ma
signifies 'a swelling' but oih'sis means 'judgment.' All the rest, say
they: "not to misuse our position to gratify our pride" is your own. What
is this you are saying, O pillar of learning(1) and latter day
Aristarchus,(2) who are so ready to pass judgment upon all writers? It is
all for nothing then that I have studied so long; that, as Juvenal says,(3)
"I have so often withdrawn my hand from the ferule." The moment I leave the
harbour I run aground. Well, to err is human and to confess one's error
wise. Do you therefore, who are so ready to criticise and to instruct me,
set me right and give me a word for word rendering of the passage. You tell
me I should have said: "Beloved, we ought not to be carried away by the
estimation of the clergy." Here, indeed we have eloquence worthy of
Plautus, here we have Attic grace, the true style of the Muses. The common
proverb is true of me: "He who trains an ox for athletics loses both oil
and money."(4) Still he is not to blame who merely puts on the mask and
plays the tragedy for another: his teachers(5) are the real culprits; since
they for a great price have taught him--to know nothing. I do not think the
worse of any Christian because he lacks skill to express himself; and I
heartily wish that we could all say with Socrates "I know that I know
nothing;"(6) and carry out the precept of another wise man, "Know
thyself."(7) I have always held in esteem a holy simplicity but not a wordy
rudeness. He who declares that he imitates the style of apostles should
first imitate the virtue of their lives; the great holiness of which made
up for much plainness of speech. They confuted the syllogisms of Aristotle
and the perverse ingenuities of Chrysippus by raising the dead. Still it
would be absurd for one of us-- living as we do amid the riches of Croesus
and the luxuries of Sardanapalus--to make his boast of mere ignorance. We
might as well say that all robbers and criminals would be men of culture if
they were to hide their blood-stained swords in books of philosophy and not
ill trunks of trees.
13. I have exceeded the limits of a letter, but I have not exceeded in
the expression of my chagrin. For, though I am called a falsifier, and have
my reputation torn to shreds, wherever there are shuttles and looms and
women to work them; I am content to repudiate the charge without
retaliating in kind. I leave everything to your discretion. You can read
the letter of Epiphanius both in Greek and in Latin; and, if you do so, you
will see at once the value of my accusers' lamentations and insulting
complaints. For the rest, I am satisfied to have instructed one of my
dearest friends and am content simply to stay quiet in my cell and to wait
for the day of judgment. If it may be so, and if my enemies allow it, I
hope to write for you, not philippics like those of Demosthenes or Tully,
but commentaries upon the scriptures.
LETTER LVIII: TO PAULINUS.
In this his second letter to Paulinus of Nola Jerome dissuades him from
making a pilgrimage to the Holy Places, and describes Jerusalem not as it
ought to be but as it is. He then gives his friend counsels for his life
similar to those which he has previously addressed to Nepotian, praises
Paulinus for his Panegyric (now no longer extant) on the Emperor
Theodosius. compares his style with those of the great writers of the Latin
Church, and concludes with a commendation of his messenger, that
Vigilantius who was soon to become the object of his bitterest contempt.
Written about the year 395 A.D.
1. "A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth
good things,"(1) and "every tree is known by his fruit."(2) You measure me
by the scale of your own virtues and because of your own greatness magnify
my littleness. You take the lowest room at the banquet that the goodman of
the house may bid you to go up higher.(3) For what is there in me or what
qualities do I possess that I should merit praise from a man of learning?
that I, small and lowly as I am, should be eulogized by lips which have
pleaded on behalf of our most religious sovereign? Do not, my dearest
brother, estimate my worth by the number of my years. Gray hairs are not
wisdom; it is wisdom which is as good as gray hairs. At least that is what
Solomon says: "wisdom is the gray hair unto men."(4) Moses too in choosing
the seventy elders is told to take those whom he knows to be elders indeed,
and to select them not for their years but for their discretion? And, as a
boy, Daniel judges old men and in the flower of youth condemns the
incontinence of age.(5) Do not, I repeat, weigh faith by years, nor suppose
me better than yourself merely because I have enlisted under Christ's
banner earlier than you. The apostle Paul, that chosen vessel framed out of
a persecutor,(1) though last in the apostolic order is first in merit. For
though last he has laboured more than they all.(2) To Judas it was once
said: "thou art a man who didst take sweet food with me, my guide and mine
acquaintance; we walked in the house of God with company:"(3) yet the
Saviour accuses him of betraying his friend and master. A line of Virgil
well describes his end:
"From a high beam he knots a hideous death."(4)
The dying robber, on the contrary, exchanges the cross for paradise and
turns to martyrdom the penalty of murder. How many there are nowadays who
have lived so long that they bear corpses rather than bodies and are like
whited sepulchres filled with dead men's bones!(5) A newly kindled heat is
more effective than a long continued lukewarmness.
2. As for you, when you hear the Saviour's counsel: "if thou wilt be
perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and come follow
me,"(6) you translate his words into action; and baring yourself to follow
the bare cross(7) you mount Jacob's ladder the easier for carrying nothing.
Your dress changes with the change in your convictions, and you aim at no
showy shabbiness which leaves your purse as full as before. No, with pure
hands and a clear conscience you make it your glory that you are poor both
in spirit and in deed. There is nothing great in wearing a sad or a
disfigured face, in simulating and in showing off fasts, or in wearing a
cheap cloak while you retain a large income. When Crates the Theban--a
millionaire of days gone by was on his way to Athens to study philosophy,
he cast away untold gold in the belief that wealth could not be compatible
with virtue. What a contrast he offers to us, the disciples of a poor
Christ, who cram our pockets with gold and cling under pretext of
almsgiving to our old riches. How can we faithfully distribute what belongs
to another when we thus timidly keep back what is our own?(8) When the
stomach is full, it is easy to talk of fasting. What is praiseworthy is not
to have been at Jerusalem but to have lived a good life while there.(9) The
city which we are to praise and to seek is not that which has slain the
prophets(10 and shed the blood of Christ, but that which is made glad by
the streams of the river,(11) which is set upon a mountain and so cannot be
hid,(12) which the apostle declares to be a mother of the saints,(13) and
in which he rejoices to have his citizenship with the righteous.(14)
3. In speaking thus I am not laying myself open to a charge of
inconsistency or condemning the course which I have myself taken. It is
not, I believe, for nothing that I, like Abraham, have left my home and
people. But I do not presume to limit God's omnipotence or to restrict to a
narrow strip of earth Him whom the heaven cannot contain. Each believer is
judged not by his residence in this place or in that but according to the
deserts of his faith. The true worshippers worship the Father neither at
Jerusalem nor on mount Gerizim; for "God is a spirit, and they that worship
Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth."(2) "Now the spirit bloweth
where it listeth,"(2) and "the earth is the Lord's and the fulness
thereof."(3) When the fleece of Judaea was made dry although the whole
world was wet with the dew of heaven,(4) and when many car. from the East
and from the West (5) and sat in Abraham's bosom:(6) then God ceased to be
known in Judah only and His name to be great in Israel alone;(7) the sound
of the apostles went out into all the earth and their words into the ends
of the world.(8) The Saviour Himself speaking to His disciples in the
temple(9) said: "arise, let us go hence,"(10) and to the Jews: "your house
is left unto you desolate."(11) If heaven and earth must pass away,(12)
obviously all things that are earthly must pass away also. Therefore the
spots which witnessed the crucifixion and the resurrection profit those
only who bear their several crosses, who day by day rise again with Christ,
and who thus shew themselves worthy of an abode so holy. Those who say "the
temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord,"(13) should give ear to the
words. of the apostle: "ye are the temple of the Lord,"(14) and the Holy
Ghost "dwelleth in you."(15) Access to the courts of heaven is as easy from
Britain as it is from Jerusalem; for "the kingdom of God is within
you."(16) Antony and the hosts of monks who are in Egypt, Mesopotamia,
Pontus, Cappadocia, and Armenia, have never seen Jerusalem: and the door of
Paradise is opened for them at a distance from it. The blessed Hilarion,
though a native of and a dweller in Palestine, only set eyes on Jerusalem
for a single day, not wishing on the one hand when he was so near to
neglect the holy places, nor yet on the other to appear to confine God
within local limits. From the time of Hadrian to the reign of Constantine--
a period of about one hundred and eighty years(1)--the spot which had
witnessed the resurrection was occupied by a figure of Jupiter; while on
the rock where the cross had stood, a marble statue of Venus was set up by
the heathen and became an object of worship. The original persecutors,
indeed, supposed that by polluting our holy places they would deprive us of
our faith in the passion and in the resurrection. Even my own Bethlehem, as
it now is, that most venerable spot in the whole world of which the
psalmist sings: "the truth hath sprung out of the earth,"(2) was
overshadowed by a grove of Tammuz,(3) that is of Adonis; and in the very
cave(4) where the infant Christ had uttered His earliest cry lamentation
was made for the paramour of Venus.(5)
4. Why, you will say, do I make these remote allusions? To assure you
that nothing is lacking to your faith although you have not seen Jerusalem
and that I am none the better for living where I do. Be assured that,
whether you dwell here or elsewhere, a like recompense is in store for your
good works with our Lord. Indeed, if I am frankly to express my own
feelings, when I take into consideration your vows and the earnestness with
which you have renounced the world, I hold that as long as you live in the
country one place is as good as another. Forsake cities and their crowds,
live on a small patch of ground, seek Christ in solitude, pray on the mount
alone with Jesus,(6) keep near to holy places: keep out of cities, I say,
and you will never lose your vocation. My advice concerns not bishops,
presbyters, or the clergy, for these have a different duty. I am speaking
only to a monk who having been a man of note in the world has laid the
price of his possessions at the apostles' feet,(7) to shew men that they
must trample on their money, and has resolved to live a life of loneliness
and seclusion and always to continue to reject what he has once rejected.
Had the scenes of the Passion and of the Resurrection been elsewhere than
in a populous city with court and garrison, with prostitutes, playactors,
and buffoons, and with the medley of persons usually found in such centres;
or had the crowds which thronged it been composed of monks; then a city
would be a desirable abode for those who have embraced the monastic life.
But, as things are, it would be the height of folly first to renounce the
world, to forswear one's country, to forsake cities, to profess one's self
a monk; and then to live among still greater numbers the same kind of life
that you would have lived in your own country. Men rush here from all
quarters of the world, the city is filled with people of every race, and so
great is the throng of men and women that here you will have to tolerate in
its full dimensions an evil from which you desired to flee when you found
it partially developed elsewhere.
5. Since you ask me as a brother in what path you should walk, I will
be open with you. If you wish to take duty as a presbyter, and are
attracted by the work or dignity which falls to the lot of a bishop, live
in cities and walled towns,(1) and by so doing turn the salvation of others
into the profit of your own soul. But if you desire to be in deed what you
are in name--a monk,(2) that is, one who lives alone, what have you to do
with cities which are the homes not of solitaries but of crowds? Every mode
of life has its own exponents. For instance, let Roman generals imitate men
like Camillus, Fabricius, Regulus, and Scipio. Let philosophers take for
models Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Let poets strive to
rival Homer, Virgil, Menander, and Terence. Let writers of history follow
Thucydides, Sallust, Herodotus and Livy. Let orators find masters in
Lysias, the Gracchi, Demosthenes, and Tully. And, to come to our own case,
let bishops and presbyters take for their examples the apostles or their
companions; and as they hold the rank which these once held, let them
endeavour to exhibit the same excellence. And last of all let us monks take
as the patterns which we arc to follow the lives of Paul, of Antony, of
Julian, of Hilarion, of the Macarii. And to go back to the authority of
scripture, we have our masters in Elijah and Elisha, and our leaders in the
sons of the prophets; who lived in fields and solitary places and made
themselves tents by the waters of Jordan.(3) The sons of Rechab too are of
the number who drank neither wine nor strong drink and who abode in tents;
men whom God's voice praises through Jeremiah,(4) and to whom a promise is
made that there shall never be wanting a man of their stock to stand before
God.(5) This is probably what is meant by the title of the seventy-first
psalm: "of the sons of Jonadab and of those who were first led into
captivity."(6) The person intended is Jonadab the son of Rechab who is
described in the book of Kings(7) as having gone up into the chariot of
Jehu. His sons having always lived in tents until at last (owing to the
inroads made by the Chaldean army) they were forced to come into Jerusalem,
are described(1) as being the first to undergo captivity; because after the
freedom of their lonely life they found confinement in a city as bad as
imprisonment.
6. Since you are not wholly independent but are bound to a wife who is
your sister in the Lord, I entreat you--whether here or there--that you
will avoid large gatherings, visits official and complimentary, and social
parties, indulgences all of which tend to enchain the soul. Let your food
be coarse--say cabbage and pulse--and do not take it until evening.
Sometimes as a great delicacy you may have some small fish. He who longs
for Christ and feeds upon the true bread cares little for dainties which
must be transmuted into ordure. Food that you cannot taste when once it has
passed your gullet might as well be--so far as you are concerned--bread and
pulse. You have my books against Jovinian which speak yet more largely of
despising the appetite and the palate. Let some holy volume be ever in your
hand. Pray constantly, and bowing down your body lift up your mind to the
Lord. Keep frequent vigils and sleep often on an empty stomach. Avoid
tittle-tattle and all self-laudation. Flee from wheedling flatterers as
from open enemies. Distribute with your own hand provisions to alleviate
the miseries of the poor and of the brethren. With your own hands, I say,
for good faith is rare among men. You do not believe what I say? Think of
Judas and his bag. Seek not a lowly garb for a swelling soul. Avoid the
society of men of the world, especially if they are in power. Why need you
look again on things contempt for which has made you a monk? Above all let
your sister(2) hold aloof from married ladies. And, if women round her wear
silk dresses and gems while she is meanly attired, let her neither fret nor
congratulate herself. For by so doing she will either regret her resolution
or sow the seeds of pride. If you are already famed as a faithful steward
of your own substance, do not take other people's money to give away. You
understand What I mean, for the Lord has given you understanding in all
things. Be simple as a dove and lay snares for no man: but be cunning as a
serpent and let no man lay snares for you.(3) For a Christian who allows
others to deceive him is almost at much at fault as one who tries to
deceive others. If a man talks to you always or nearly always about money
(except it be about alms-giving, a topic which is open to all) treat him as
a broker rather than a monk. Besides food and clothing and things
manifestly necessary give no man anything; for dogs must not eat the
children's bread.(1)
7. The true temple of Christ is the believer's soul; adorn this, clothe
it, offer gifts to it, welcome Christ in it. What use are walls blazing
with jewels when Christ in His poor(2) is in danger of perishing from
hunger? Your possessions are no longer your own but a stewardship is
entrusted to you. Remember Ananias and Sapphira who from fear of the future
kept what was their own, and be careful for your part not rashly to
squander what is Christ's. Do not, that is, by an error of judgment give
the property of the poor to those who are not poor; lest, as a wise man has
told us,(3) charity prove the death of charity.Look not upon
Gay trappings or a Cato's empty name.(4)
In the words of Persius, God says:--
I know thy thoughts and read thine inmost soul.(5)
To be a Christian is the great thing, not merely to seem one. And somehow
or other those please the world most who please Christ least. In speaking
thus I am not like the sow lecturing Minerva; but, as a friend warns a
friend, so I warn you before you embark on your new course. I would rather
fail in ability than in will to serve you; for my wish is that where I have
fallen you may keep your footing.
8. It is with much pleasure that I have read the book which you have
sent to me containing your wise and eloquent defence of the emperor
Theodosius; and your arrangement of the subject has particularly pleased
me. While in the earlier chapters you surpass others, in the latter you
surpass yourself. Your style is terse and neat; it has all the purity of
Tully, and yet it is packed with meaning. For, as someone has said,(6) that
speech is a failure of which men only praise the diction. You have been
successful in preserving both sequence of subjects and logical connexion.
Whatever sentence one takes, it is always a conclusion to what goes before
or an introduction to what follows. Theodosius is fortunate in having a
Christian orator like you to plead his cause. You have made his purple
illustrious and have consecrated for future ages his useful laws. Go on and
prosper, for, if such be your first ventures in the field, what will you
not do when you become a trained soldier? Oh! that it were mine to conduct
a genius like you, not(as the poets sing) through the Aonian mountains and
the peaks of Helicon but through Zion and Tabor and the high places of
Sinai. If I might teach you what I have learned myself and might pass on to
you the mystic rolls of the prophets, then might we give birth to something
such as Greece with all her learning could not shew.
9. Hear me, therefore, my fellow-servant, my friend, my brother; give
ear for a moment that I may tell you how you are to walk in the holy
scriptures. All that we read in the divine books, while glistening and
shining without, is yet far sweeter within. "He who desires to eat the
kernel must first break the nut."(1) "Open thou mine eyes," says David,
"that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law."(2) Now, if so great a
prophet confesses that he is in the darkness of ignorance; how deep, think
you, must be the night of misapprehension with which we, mere babes and
unweaned infants, are enveloped! Now this veil rests not only on the face
of Moses,(3) but on the evangelists and the apostles as well.(4) To the
multitudes the Saviour spoke only in parables and, to make it clear that
His words had a mystical meaning, said:--"he that hath ears to hear, let
him hear."(5) Unless all things that are written are opened by Him "who
hath the key of David, who openeth and no man shutteth, and shutteth and no
man openeth,"(6) no one can undo the lock or set them before you. If only
you had the foundation which He alone can give; nay, if even His fingers
were but passed over your work; there would be nothing finer than your
volumes, nothing more learned, nothing more attractive, nothing more Latin.
10. Tertullian is packed with meaning but his style is rugged and
uncouth. The blessed Cyprian like a fountain of pure water flows softly and
sweetly but, as he is taken up with exhortations to virtue and with the
troubles consequent on persecution, he has nowhere discussed the divine
scriptures. Victorinus, although he has the glory of a martyr's crown, yet
cannot express what he knows. Lactantius has a flow of eloquence worthy of
Tully: would that he had been as ready to teach our doctrines as he was to
pull down those of others! Arnobius is lengthy and unequal, and often
confused from not making a proper division of his subject. That reverend
man Hilary gains in height from his Gallic buskin; yet, adorned as he is
with the flowers of Greek rhetoric, he sometimes entangles himself in long
periods and offers by no means easy reading to the less learned brethren. I
say nothing of other writers whether dead or living; others will hereafter
judge them both for good and for evil.(1)
11. I will come to yourself, my fellow-mystic, my companion, and my
friend; my friend, I say, though not yet personally known: and I will ask
you not to suspect a flatterer in one so intimate. Better that you should
think me mistaken or led astray by affection than that you should hold me
capable of fawning on a friend. You have a great intellect and an
inexhaustible store of language, your diction is fluent and pure, your
fluency and purity are mingled with wisdom. Your head is clear and all your
senses keen. Were you to add to this wisdom and eloquence a careful study
and knowledge of scripture, I should soon see you holding our citadel
against all comers; you would go up with Joab upon the roof of Zion,(2) and
sing upon the housetops what you had learned in the secret chambers.(3)
Gird up, I pray you, gird up your loins. As Horace says:--
"Life hath no gifts for men except they toil."(4)
Shew yourself as much a man of note in the church, as you were before in
the senate. Provide for yourself riches which you may spend daily yet they
will not fail. Provide them while you are still strong and while as yet
your head has no gray hairs: before, in the words of Virgil,
"Diseases creep on you, and gloomy age,
And pain, and cruel death's inclemency."(5)
I am not content with mediocrity for you: I desire all that you do to be of
the highest excellence.
How heartily I have welcomed the reverend presbyter Vigilantius,(6) his
own lips will tell you better than this letter. Why he has so soon left. us
and started afresh I cannot say; and, indeed, I do not wish to hurt
anyone's feelings.(7) Still, mere passer-by as he was, in haste to continue
his journey, I managed to keep him back until I had given him a taste of my
friendship for you. Thus you can learn from him what you want to know about
me. Kindly salute your reverend sister(8) and fellow-servant, who with you
fights the good fight in the Lord.
LETTER LIX: TO MARCELLA.
An answer to five questions put to Jerome by Marcella in a letter not
preserved. The questions are as follows.
(1) What are the things which eye hath not seen nor ear heard (1 Cor. ii.
9)? Jerome answers that they are spiritual things which as such can only be
spiritually discerned.
(2) Is it not a mistake to identify the sheep and the goats of Christ's
parable (Matt. xxv. 31 sqq.) with Christians and heathens? Are they not
rather the good and the bad? For an answer to this question Jerome refers
Marcella to his treatise against Jovinian (II. ## 18-23).
(3) Paul says that some shall be "alive and remain unto the coming of the
Lord;" and that they shall be "caught up to meet the Lord in the air" (1
Thess. iv. 15, 17). Are we to suppose this assumption to be corporeal and
that those assumed will escape death? Yes, Jerome answers, but their bodies
will be glorified.
(4) How is John xx. 17, "touch me not," to be reconciled with Matt. xxviii.
9, "they came and held him by the feet"? In the one case, Jerome replies,
Mary Magdalen failed to recognize the divinity of Jesus; in the other the
women recognized it. Accordingly they were admitted to a privilege which
was denied to her.
(5) Was the risen Christ before His ascension present only with the
disciples, or was He in heaven and elsewhere as well? The latter according
to Jerome is the true doctrine. "The Divine Nature," he writes, "exists
everywhere in its entirety. Christ, therefore, was at one and the same time
with the apostles and with the angels; in the Father and in the uttermost
parts of the sea. So afterwards he was with Thomas in India, with Peter at
Rome, with Paul in Illyricum, with Titus in Crete, with Andrew in Achaia."
The date of the letter is A. D. 395 or A. D. 396.
LETTER LX: TO HELIODORUS.
One of Jerome's finest letters, written to console his old friend,
Heliodorus, now Bp. of Altinum, for the loss of his nephew Nepotian who had
died of fever a short time previously. Jerome tries to soothe his friend's
grief(1) by contrasting pagan despair or resignation with Christian
hope,(2) by an eulogy of the departed both as man and presbyter, and(3) by
a review of the evils which then beset the Empire and from which, as he
contended, Nepotian had been removed. The letter is marked throughout with
deep and sincere feeling. Its date is 396 A. D.
1. Small wits cannot grapple large themes but venturing beyond their
strength fail in the very attempt; and, the greater a subject is, the more
completely is he overwhelmed who cannot find words to unfold its grandeur.
Nepotian who was mine and yours and ours--or rather who was Christ's and
because Christ's all the more ours--has forsaken us his eiders so that we
are smitten with pangs of regret and overcome with a grief which is past
bearing. We supposed him our heir, yet now his corpse is all that is ours.
For whom shall my intellect now labour? Whom shall my poor letters desire
to please? Where is he, the impeller of my work, whose voice was sweeter
than a swan's last song? My mind is dazed my hand trembles, a mist covers
my eyes, stammering seizes my tongue. Whatever my words, they seem as good
as unspoken seeing that he no longer hears them. My very pen seems to feel
his loss, my very wax tablet looks dull and sad; the one is covered with
rust, the other with mould. As often as I try to express myself in words
and to scatter the flowers of this encomium upon his tomb, my eyes fill
with tears, my grief returns, and I can think of nothing but his death. It
was a custom in former days for children over the dead bodies of their
parents publicly to proclaim their praises and (as when pathetic songs are
sung) to draw tears from the eyes and sighs from the breasts of those who
heard them. But in our case, behold, the order of things is changed: to
deal us this blow nature has forfeited her rights. For the respect which
the young man should have paid to his elders, we his elders are paying to
him.
2. What shall I do then? Shall I join my tears to yours? The apostle
forbids me for he speaks of dead Christians as "them which are asleep."(1)
So too in the gospel the Lord says, "the damsel is not dead but
sleepeth,"(2) and Lazarus when he is raised from the dead is said to have
been asleep.(3) No, I will be glad and rejoice that "speedily he was taken
away lest that wickedness should alter his understanding" for "his soul
pleased the Lord."(4) But though I am loth to give way and combat my
feelings, tears flow down my cheeks, and in spite of the teachings of
virtue and the hope of the resurrection a passion of regret crushes my too
yielding mind. O death that dividest brothers knit together in love, how
cruel, how ruthless thou art so to sunder them! "The Lord hath fetched a
burning wind that cometh up from the wilderness: which hath dried thy veins
and hath made thy well spring desolate."(5) Thou didst swallow up our
Jonah, but even in thy belly He still lived. Thou didst carry Him as one
dead, that the world's storm might be stilled and our Nineveh saved by His
preaching. He, yes He, conquered thee, He slew thee, that fugitive prophet
who left His home, gave up His inheritance and surrendered his dear life
into the hands of those who sought it. He it was who of old threatened thee
in Hoses: "O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy
destruction."(6) By His death thou art dead; by His death we live. Thou
hast swallowed up and thou art swallowed up. Whilst thou art smitten with a
longing for the body assumed by Him, and whilst thy greedy jaws fancy it a
prey, thy inward parts are wounded with hooked fangs.
3. To Thee, O Saviour Christ, do we Thy creatures offer thanks that,
when Thou wast slain, Thou didst slay our mighty adversary. Before Thy
coming was there any being more miserable than man who cowering at the
dread prospect of eternal death did but receive life that he might perish!
For "death reigned from Adam to Moses even over them that had not sinned
after the similitude of Adam's transgression."(1) If Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob be in hell, who can be in the kingdom of heaven? If Thy friends--even
those who had not sinned themselves--were yet for the sins of another
liable to the punishment of offending Adam, what must we think of those who
have said in their hearts "There is no God;" who "are corrupt and
abominable"(2) in their self-will, and of whom it is said "they are gone
out of the way, they are become unprofitable; there is none that doeth
good, no not one"?(3) Even if Lazarus is seen in Abraham's bosom and in a
place of refreshment, still the lower regions cannot be compared with the
kingdom of heaven. Before Christ's coming Abraham is in the lower regions:
after Christ's coming the robber is in paradise. And therefore at His
rising again "many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and were seen in
the heavenly Jerusalem."(4) Then was fulfilled the saying: "Awake thou that
sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light."(5)
John the Baptist cries in the desert: "repent ye; for the kingdom of heaven
is at hand."(6) For "from the days of John the Baptist the kingdom of
heaven suffereth violence and the violent take it by force."(7) The flaming
sword that keeps the way of paradise and the cherubim that are stationed at
its doors(8) are alike quenched and unloosed by the blood of Christ.(9) It
is not surprising that this should be promised us in the resurrection: for
as many of us as living in the flesh do not live after the flesh,(10) have
our citizenship in heaven,(11) and while we are still here on earth we are
told that "the kingdom of heaven is within us."(12)
4. Moreover before the resurrection of Christ God was "known in Judah"
only and "His name was great in Israel" alone.(12) And they who knew Him
were despite their knowledge dragged down to hell. Where in those days were
the inhabitants of the globe from India to Britain, from the frozen zone of
the North to the burning heat of the Atlantic ocean? Where were the
countless peoples of the world? Where the great multitudes?
"Unlike in tongue, unlike in dress and arms?"(1)
They were crushed like fishes and locusts, like flies and gnats. For apart
from knowledge of his Creator every man is but a brute. But now the voices
and writings of all nations proclaim the passion and the resurrection of
Christ. I say nothing of the Jews, the Greeks, and the Romans, peoples
which the Lord has dedicated to His faith by the title written on His
cross.(2) The immortality of the soul and its continuance after the
dissolution of the body--truths of which Pythagoras dreamed, which
Democritus refused to believe, and which Socrates discussed in prison to
console himself for the sentence passed upon him--are now the familiar
themes of Indian and of Persian, of Goth and of Egyptian. The fierce
Bessians(3) and the throng of skinclad savages who used to offer human
sacrifices in honour of the dead have broken out of their harsh discord
into the sweet music of the cross and Christ is the one cry of the whole
world.
5. What can we do, my soul? Whither must we turn? What must we take up
first? What must we pass over? Have you forgotten the precepts of the
rhetoricians? Are you so preoccupied with grief, so overcome with tears, so
hindered with sobs, that you forget all logical sequence? Where are the
studies you have pursued from your childhood? Where is that saying of
Anaxagoras and Telamon (which you have always commended) "I knew myself to
have begotten a mortal"?(4) I have read the books of Crantor which he wrote
to soothe his grief and which Cicero has imitated.(5) I have read the
consolatory writings of Plato, Diogenes, Clitomachus, Carneades,
Posidonius, who at different times strove by book or letter to lessen the
grief of various persons. Consequently, were my own wit to dry up, it could
be watered anew from the fountains which these have opened. They set before
us examples without number; and particularly those of Pericles and of
Socrates's pupil Xenophon. The former of these after the, loss of his two
sons put on a garland and delivered a harangue;(6) while the latter, on
hearing when he was offering sacrifice that his son had been slain in war,
is said to have laid down his garland; and then, on learning that he had
fallen fighting bravely, is said to have put it on his head again. What
shall I say of those Roman generals whose heroic virtues glitter like stars
on the pages of Latin history? Pulvillus was dedicating the capitol(1) when
receiving the news of his son's sudden death, he gave orders that the
funeral should take place without him. Lucius Paullus(2) entered the city
in triumph in the week which intervened between the funerals of his two
sons. I pass over the Maximi, the Catos, the Galli, the Pisos, the Bruti,
the Scaevolas, the Metelli, the Scauri, the Marii, the Crassi, the
Marcelli, the Aufidii, men who shewed equal fortitude in sorrow and war,
and whose bereavements Tully has set forth in his book Of consolation. I
pass them over lest I should seem to have chosen the words and woes of
others in preference to my own. Yet even these instances may suffice to
ensure us mortification if our faith fails to surpass the achievements of
unbelief.
6. Let me come then to my proper subject. I will not beat my breast
with Jacob and with David for sons dying in the Law, but I will receive
them rising again with Christ in the Gospel. The Jew's mourning is the
Christian's joy. "Weeping may endure for a night but joy cometh in the
morning."(3) "The night is far spent, the day is at hand."(4) Accordingly
when Moses dies, mourning is made for him,(5) but when Joshua is buried, it
is without tears or funeral pomp.(5) All that can be drawn from scripture
on the subject of lamentation I have briefly set forth in the letter of
consolation which I addressed to Paula at Rome.(7) Now I must take another
path to arrive at the same goal. Otherwise I shall seem to be walking anew
in a track once beaten but now long disused.
7. We know indeed that our Nepotian is with Christ and that he has
joined the choirs of the saints. What here with us he groped after on earth
afar off and sought for to the best of his judgment, there he sees nigh at
hand, so that he can say: "as we have heard so have we seen in the city of
the Lord of hosts, in the city of our God."(8) Still we cannot bear the
feeling of his absence, and grieve, if not for him, for ourselves. The
greater the happiness which he enjoys, the deeper the sorrow in which the
loss of a blessing so great plunges us. The sisters of Lazarus could not
help weeping for him, although they knew that he would rise again. And the
Saviour himself--to shew that he possessed true human feeling--mourned for
him whom He was about to raise.(9) His apostle also, though he says: "I
desire to depart and to be with Christ,"(10) and elsewhere "to me to live
is Christ and to die is gain,"(1) thanks God that Epaphras(2) (who had been
"sick nigh unto death") has been given back to him that he might not have
sorrow upon sorrow? Words prompted not by the fear that springs of unbelief
but by the passionate regret that comes of true affection. How much more
deeply must you who were to Nepotian both uncle and bishop,(that is, a
father both in the flesh and in the spirit), deplore the loss of one so
dear, as though your heart were torn from you. Set a limit, I pray you, to
your sorrow and remember the saying "in nothing overmuch."(4) Bind up for a
little while your wound and listen to the praises of one in whose virtue
you have always delighted. Do not grieve that you have lost such a paragon:
rejoice rather that he has once been yours. As on a small tablet men depict
the configuration of the earth, so in this little scroll of mine you may
see his virtues if not fully depicted at least sketched in outline. I beg
that you will take the will for the performance.
8. The advice of the rhetoricians in such cases is that you should
first search out the remote ancestors of the person to be eulogized and
recount their exploits, and then come gradually to your hero; so as to make
him more illustrious by the virtues of his forefathers, and to show either
that he is a worthy successor of good men, or that he has conferred lustre
upon a lineage in itself obscure. But as my duty is to sing the praises of
the soul, I will not dwell upon those fleshly advantages which Nepotian for
his part always despised. Nor will I boast of his family, that is of the
good points belonging not to him but to others; for even those holy men
Abraham and Isaac had for sons the sinners Ishmael and Esau. And on the
other hand Jephthah who is reckoned by the apostle in the roll of the
righteous(5) is the son of a harlot.(6) It is said "the soul that sinneth,
it shall die."(7) The soul therefore that has not sinned shall live.
Neither the virtues nor the vices of parents are imputed to their children.
God takes account of us only from the time when we are born anew in Christ.
Paul, the persecutor of the church, who is in the morning the ravening wolf
of Benjamin,(8) in the evening "gave food,"(9) that is yields himself up to
the sheep Ananias.(10) Let us likewise reckon our Nepotian a crying babe
and an untutored child who has been born to us in a moment fresh from the
waters of Jordan.
9. Another would perhaps describe how for his salvation you left the
east and the desert and how you soothed me your dearest comrade by holding
out hopes of a return: and all this that you might save, if possible, both
your sister, then a widow with one little child, or, should she reject your
counsels, at any rate your sweet little nephew. It was of him that I once
used the prophetic words: "though your little nephew cling to your
neck."(1) Another, I say, would relate how while Nepotian was still in the
service of the court, beneath his uniform and his brilliantly white
linen,(2) his skin was chafed with sackcloth; how, while standing before
the powers of this world, his lips were discoloured with fasting; how still
in the uniform of one master he served another; and how he wore the sword-
belt only that he might succour widows and wards, the afflicted and the
unhappy. For my part I dislike men to delay the complete dedication of
themselves to God. When I read of the centurion Cornelius(2) that he was a
just man I immediately hear of his baptism.
10. Still we may approve these things as the swathing bands of an
infant faith. He who has been a loyal soldier under a strange banner is
sure to deserve the laurel when he comes to serve his own king. When
Nepotian laid aside his baldrick and changed his dress, he bestowed upon
the poor all the pay that he had received. For he had read the words: "if
thou wilt be perfect, sell that thou hast, and give to the poor and follow
me,"(4) and again: "ye cannot serve two masters, God and Mammon."(5) He
kept nothing for himself but a common tunic and cloak to cover him and to
keep out the cold. Made in the fashion of his province his attire was not
remarkable either for elegance or for squalor. He burned daily to make his
way to the monasteries of Egypt, or to visit the communities of
Mesopotamia, or at least to live a lonely life in the Dalmatian islands,(6)
separated from the mainland only by the strait of Altinum. But he had not
the heart to forsake his episcopal uncle in whom he beheld a pattern of
many virtues and from whom he could take lessons without going abroad. In
one and the same person he both found a monk to imitate and a bishop to
revere. What so often happens did not happen here. Constant intimacy did
not produce familiarity, nor did familiarity breed contempt. He revered him
as a father and every day admired him for some new virtue. To be brief, he
became a clergyman, and after passing through the usual stages was ordained
a presbyter. Good Jesus! how he sighed and groaned! how he fasted and fled
the eyes of all! For the first and only time he was angry with his uncle,
complaining that the burthen laid upon him was too heavy for him and that
his youth unfitted him for the priesthood. But the more he struggled
against it, the more he drew to himself the hearts of all: his refusal did
but prove him worthy of an office which he was reluctant to assume, and all
the more worthy because he declared himself unworthy. We too in our day
have our Timothy; we too have seen that wisdom which is as good as gray
hairs;(1) our Moses has chosen an elder whom he has known to be an eider
indeed.(2) Nepotian regarded the clerical state less as an honour than a
burthen. He made it his first care to silence envy by humility, and his
next to give no cause for scandal that such as assailed his youth might
marvel at his continence. He helped the poor, visited the sick, stirred men
up to hospitality, soothed them with soft words, rejoiced with those who
rejoiced and wept with those who wept.(3) He was a staff to the blind, food
to the hungry, hope to the dejected, consolation to the bereaved. Each
single virtue was as conspicuous in him as if he possessed no other. Among
his fellow- presbyters while ever foremost in work, he was ever satisfied
with the lowest place. Any good that he did he ascribed to his uncle: but
if the result did not correspond to his expectations, he would say that his
uncle knew nothing of it, that it was his own mistake. In public he
recognized him as a bishop; at home he looked upon him as a father. The
seriousness of his disposition was mitigated by a cheerful expression. But
while his laughter was joyous it was never loud. Christ's virgins and
widows he honoured as mothers and exhorted as sisters "with all purity."(4)
When he returned home he used to leave the clergyman outside and to give
himself over to the hard rule of a monk. Frequent in supplication and
watchful in prayer he would offer his tears not to man but to God. His
fasts he regulated--as a driver does the pace of his horses-- according to
the weariness or vigour of his body. When at his uncle's table he would
just taste what was set before him, so as to avoid superstition and yet to
preserve self- control. In conversing at entertainments his habit was to
propose some topic from scripture, to listen modestly, to answer
diffidently, to support the right, to refute the wrong, but both without
bitterness; to instruct his opponent rather than to vanquish him. Such was
the ingenuous modesty which adorned his youth that he would frankly confess
from what sources his several arguments came; and in this way, while
disclaiming a reputation for learning, he came to be held most learned.
This he would say is the opinion of Tertullian, that of Cyprian; this of
Lactantius, that of Hilary; to this effect speaks Minucius Felix, thus
Victorinus, after this manner Arnobius. Myself too he would sometimes
quote, for he loved me because of my intimacy with his uncle. Indeed by
constant reading and long-continued meditation he had made his breast a
library of Christ.
11. How often in letters from beyond the sea he urged me to write
something to him! How often he reminded me of the man in the gospel who
sought help by night(1) and of the widow who importuned the cruel judge!(2)
And when I silently ignored his request and made my petitioner blush by
blushing to reply, he put forward his uncle to enforce his suit, knowing
that as the boon was for another he would more readily ask it, and that as
I held his episcopal office in respect he would more easily obtain it.
Accordingly I did what he wished and in a brief essay(3) dedicated our
mutual friendship to everlasting remembrance. On receiving this Nepotian
boasted that he was richer than Croesus and wealthier than Darius. He held
it in his hands, devoured it with his eyes, kept it in his bosom, repeated
it with his lips. And often when he unrolled it upon his couch, he fell
asleep with the cherished page upon his breast. When a stranger came or a
friend, he rejoiced to let them know my witness to him. The deficiencies of
my little book he made good by careful punctuation and varied emphasis, so
that when it was read aloud it was always he not I who seemed to please or
to displease. Whence came such zeal, if not from the love of God? Whence
came such untiring study of Christ's law, if not from a yearning for Him
who gave it? Let others add coin to coin till their purses are chock-full;
let others demean themselves to sponge on married ladies; let them be
richer as monks than they were as men of the world; let them possess wealth
in the service of a poor Christ such as they never had in the service of a
rich devil; let the church lose breath at the opulence of men who in the
world were beggars. Our Nepotian spurns gold and begs only for written
books. But while he despises himself in the flesh and walks abroad more
splendid than ever in his poverty, he still seeks out everything that may
adorn the church.
12. In comparison with what has gone before what I am now about to say
may appear trivial, but even in trifles the same spirit makes itself
manifest. For as we admire the Creator not only as the framer of heaven and
earth, of sun and ocean, of elephants, camels, horses, oxen, pards, bears,
and lions; but also as the maker of the most tiny creatures, ants, gnats,
flies, worms, and the like, whose shapes we know better than their names,
and as in all alike we revere the same creative skill; so the mind that is
given to Christ shews the same earnestness in things of small as of great
importance, knowing that it must render an account of every idle word.(1)
Nepotian took pains to keep the altar bright, the church walls free from
soot and the pavement duly swept. He saw that the doorkeeper was constantly
at his post, that the doorhangings were in their places, the sanctuary
clean and the vessels shining. The careful reverence that he shewed to
every rite led him to neglect no duty small or great. Whenever you looked
for him in church you found him there.
In Quintus Fabius(2) antiquity admired a nobleman and the author of a
history of Rome, yet his paintings gained him more renown than his
writings. Our own Bezaleel(3) also and Hiram, the son of a Tyrian woman,(4)
are spoken of in scripture as filled with wisdom and the spirit of God
because they framed, the one the furniture of the tabernacle, the other
that of the temple. For, as it is with fertile tillage-fields and rich
plough-lands which at times go out into redundant growths of stalk or ear,
so is it with distinguished talents and a mind filled with virtue. They are
sure to overflow into elegant and varied accomplishments. Accordingly among
the Greeks we hear of a philosopher(5) who used to boast that everything he
wore down to his cloak and ring was made by himself. We may pass the same
eulogy on our friend, for he adorned both the basilicas of the church and
the halls(6) of the martyrs with sketches of flowers, foliage, and vine-
tendrils, so that everything attractive in the church, whether made so by
its position or by its appearance, bore witness to the labour and zeal of
the presbyter set over it.
13. Go on blessed in thy goodness! What kind of ending should we expect
after such a beginning! Ah! hapless plight of mortal men and vanity of all
life that is not lived in Christ! Why, O my words, do you shrink back? Why
do you shift and turn? I fear to come to the end, as if I could put off his
death or make his life longer. "All flesh is as grass and all the glory of
man as the flower of grass."(1) Where now are that handsome face and
dignified figure with which as with a fair garment his beautiful soul was
clothed? The lily began to wither, alas! when the south wind blew, and the
purple violet slowly faded into paleness. Yet while he burned with fever
and while the fire of sickness was drying up the fountains of his veins,
gasping and weary he still tried to comfort his sorrowing uncle. His
countenance shone with gladness, and while all around him wept he and he
only smiled. He flung aside his cloak, put out his hand, saw what others
failed to see, and even tried to rise that he might welcome new comers. You
would have thought that he was starting on a journey instead of dying and
that in place of leaving all his friends behind him he was merely passing
from some to others.(2) Tears roll down my cheeks and, however much I steel
my mind, I cannot disguise the grief that I feel. Who could suppose that at
such an hour he would remember his intimacy with me, and that while he
struggled for life he would recall the sweetness of study? Yet grasping his
uncle's hand he said to him: "Send this tunic that I wore in the service of
Christ to my dear friend, my father in age, but my brother in office, and
transfer the affection hitherto claimed by your nephew to one who is as
dear to you as he is to me." With these words he passed away holding his
uncle's hand and with my name upon his lips.
14. I know how unwilling you were to prove the affection of your people
at such a cost, and that you would have preferred to win your countrymen's
love while retaining your happiness. Such expressions of feeling, pleasant
as they are when all goes well, are doubly welcome in time of sorrow. All
Altinum, all Italy mourned Nepotian. The earth received his body; his soul
was given back to Christ. You lost a nephew, the church a priest. He who
should have followed you went before you. To the office which you held, he
in the judgment of all deserved to succeed. And so one family has had the
honour of producing two bishops, the first to be congratulated because he
has held the office, the second to be lamented because he has been taken
away too soon to hold it. Plato thinks that a wise man's whole life ought
to be a meditation of death;(3) and philosophers praise the sentiment and
extol it to the skies. But much more full of power are the words of the
apostle: "I die daily through your glory."(4) For to have an ideal is one
thing, to realize it another. It is one thing to live so as to die, another
to die so as to live. The sage and Christian must both of them die: but the
one always dies out of his glory, the other into it. Therefore we also
should consider beforehand the end which must one day overtake us and
which, whether we wish it or not, cannot be very far distant. For though we
should live nine hundred years or more, as men did before the deluge, and
though the days of Methuselah(1) should be granted us, yet that long space
of time, when once it should have passed away and come to an end, would be
as nothing. For to the man who has lived ten years and to him who has lived
a thousand, when once the end of life comes and death's inexorable doom,
all the past whether long or short is just the same; except that the older
a man is, the heavier is the load of sin that he has to take with him.
First hapless mortals lose from out their life
The fairest days: disease and age come next;
And lastly cruel death doth claim his prey.(2)
The poet Naevius too says that
"Mortals must many woes perforce endure."
Accordingly antiquity has feigned that Niobe because of her much weeping
was turned to stone and that other women were metamorphosed into beasts.
Hesiod also bewails men's birthdays and rejoices in their deaths, and
Ennius wisely says:
"The mob has one advantage o'er its king:
For it may weep while tears for him are shame."
If a king may not weep, neither may a bishop; indeed a bishop has still
less license than a king. For the king rules over unwilling subjects, the
bishop over willing ones. The king compels submission by terror; the bishop
exercises lordship by becoming a servant. The king guards men's bodies till
they die; the bishop saves their souls for life eternal. The eyes of all
are turned upon you. Your house is set on a watchtower; your life fixes for
others the limits of their self-control. Whatever you do, all think that
they may do the same. Do not so commit yourself that those who seek ground
for cavil may be thought to have rightly assailed you, or that those who
are eager to imitate you may be forced to do wrong. Overcome as much as you
can--nay even more than you can-- the sensitiveness of your mind and check
the copious flow of your tears. Else your deep affection for your nephew
may be construed by unbelievers as indicating despair of God. You must
regret him not as dead but as absent. You must seem lobe looking for him
rather than have lost him.
15. But why do I try to heal a sorrow which has already, I suppose,
been assuaged by time and reason? Why do I not rather unfold to you--they
are not far to seek--the miseries of our rulers and the calamities of our
time? He who has lost the light of life is not so much to be pitied as he
is to be congratulated who has escaped from such great evils.
Constantius,(1) the patron of the Arian heresy, was hurrying to do battle
with his enemy(2) when he died at the village of Mopsus and to his great
vexation left the empire to his foe. Julian(3), the betrayer of his own
soul, the murderer of a Christian army, felt in Media the hand of the
Christ whom he had previously denied in Gaul. Desiring to annex new
territories to Rome, he did but lose annexations previously made. Jovian(4)
had but just tasted the sweets of sovereignty when a coal-fire suffocated
him: a good instance of the transitoriness of human power. Valentinian(5)
died of a broken blood vessel, the land of his birth laid waste, and his
country unavenged. His brother Valens(6) defeated in Thrace by the Goths,
was buried where he died. Gratian, betrayed by his army and refused
admittance by the cities on his line of march, became the laughing-stock of
his foe; and your walls, Lyons, still bear the marks of that bloody
hand.(7) Valentinian was yet a youth--I may say, a mere boy--when, after
flight and exile and the recovery of his power by bloodshed, he was put to
death(8) not far from the city which had witnessed his brother's end. And
not only so but his lifeless body was gibbeted to do him shame. What shall
I say of Procopius, of Maximus, of Eugenius,(9) who while they held
sovereign sway were a terror to the nations, yet stood one and all as
prisoners in the presence of their conquerors, and--cruellest wound of all
to the great and powerful--felt the pang of an ignominious slavery before
they fell by the edge of the sword.
16. Some one may say: such is the lot of kings:
"The lightning ever smites the mountain-tops."(10)
I will come therefore to persons of private position, and in speaking of
these I will not go farther back than the last two years. In fact I will
content myself--omitting all others- -with recounting the respective fates
of three recent consulars. Abundantius is a beggared exile at Pityus.(11)
The head of Rufinus has been carried on a pike to Constantinople, and his
severed hand has begged alms from door to door to shame his insatiable
greed.(1) Timasius,(2) hurled suddenly from a position of the highest rank
thinks it an escape that he is allowed to live in obscurity at Assa. I am
describing not the misfortunes of an unhappy few but the thread upon which
human fortunes as a whole depend. I shudder when I think of the
catastrophes of our time. For twenty years and more the blood of Romans has
been shed daily between Constantinople and the Julian Alps. Scythia,
Thrace, Macedonia, Dardania, Dacia, Thessaly, Achaia, Epirus, Dalmatia, the
Pannonias--each and all of these have been sacked and pillaged and
plundered by Goths and Sarmatians, Quades and Alans, Huns and Vandals and
Marchmen. How many of God's matrons and virgins, Virtuous and noble ladies,
have been made the sport of these brutes! Bishops have been made captive,
priests and those in minor orders have been put to death. Churches have
been overthrown, horses have been stalled by the altars of Christ, the
relics of martyrs have been dug up.
"Mourning and fear abound on every side
And death appears in countless shapes and forms."(3)
The Roman world is falling: yet we hold up our heads instead of bowing
them. What courage, think you, have the Corinthians now, or the Athenians
or the Lacedaemonians or the Arcadians, or any of the Greeks over whom the
barbarians bear sway? I have mentioned only a few cities, but these once
the capitals of no mean states. The East, it is true, seemed to be safe
from all such evils: and if men were panic-stricken here, it was only
because of bad news from other parts. But lo! in the year just gone by the
wolves (no longer of Arabia but of the whole North(4)) were let loose upon
us from the remotest fastnesses of Caucasus and in a short time overran
these great provinces. What a number of monasteries they captured! What
many rivers they caused to run red with blood! They laid siege to Antioch
and invested other cities on the Halys, the Cydnus, the Orontes, and the
Euphrates. They carried off troops of captives. Arabia, Phenicia, Palestine
and Egypt, in their terror fancied themselves already enslaved.
Had I a hundred tongues, a hundred lips,
A throat of iron and a chest of brass,
I could not tell men's countless sufferings.(5)
And indeed it is not my purpose to write a history: I only wish to shed a
few tears over your sorrows and mine. For the rest, to treat such themes as
they deserve, Thucydides and Sallust would be as good as dumb.
17. Nepotian is happy who neither sees these things nor hears them. We
are unhappy, for either we suffer ourselves or we see our brethren suffer.
Yet we desire to live, and regard those beyond the reach of these evils as
miserable rather than blessed. We have long felt that God is angry, yet we
do not try to appease Him. It is our sins which make the barbarians strong,
it is our vices which vanquish Rome's soldiers: and, as if there were here
too little material for carnage, civil wars have made almost greater havoc
among us than the swords of foreign foes. Miserable must those Israelites
have been compared with whom Nebuchadnezzar was called God's servant.(1)
Unhappy too are we who are so displeasing to God that He uses the fury of
the barbarians to execute His wrath against us. Still when Hezekiah
repented, one hundred and eighty-five thousand Assyrians were destroyed in
one night by a single angel.(2) When Jehosaphat sang the praises of the
Lord, the Lord gave His worshipper the victory.(3) Again when Moses fought
against Amalek, it was not with the sword but with prayer that he
prevailed.(4) Therefore, if we wish to be lifted up, we must first
prostrate ourselves. Alas! for our shame and folly reaching even to
unbelief! Rome's army, once victor and lord of the world, now trembles with
terror at the sight of the foe and accepts defeat from men who cannot walk
afoot and fancy themselves dead if once they are unhorsed.(5) We do not
understand the prophet's words: "One thousand shall flee at the rebuke of
one."(6) We do not cut away the causes of the disease, as we must do to
remove the disease itself. Else we should soon see the enemies' arrows give
way to our javelins, their caps to our helmets, their palfreys to our
chargers.
18. But I have gone beyond the office of a consoler, and while
forbidding you to weep for one dead man I have myself mourned the dead of
the whole world. Xerxes the mighty king who rased mountains and filled up
seas, looking from high ground upon the untold host, the countless army
before him, is said(7) to have wept at the thought that in a hundred years
not one of those whom he then saw would be alive. Oh! if we could but get
up into a watch-tower so high that from it we might behold the whole earth
spread out under our feet, then I would shew you the wreck of a world,
nation warring against nation and kingdom in collision with kingdom; some
men tortured, others put to the sword, others swallowed up by the waves,
some dragged away into slavery; here a wedding, there a funeral; men born
here, men dying there; some living in affluence, others begging their
bread; and not the army of Xerxes, great as that was, but all the
inhabitants of the world alive now but destined soon to pass away. Language
is inadequate to a theme so vast and all that I can say must fall short of
the reality.
19. Let us return then to ourselves and coming down from the skies let
us look for a few moments upon what more nearly concerns us. Are you
conscious, I would ask, of the stages of your growth? Can you fix the time
when you became a babe, a boy, a youth, an adult, an old man? Every day we
are changing, every day we are dying, and yet we fancy ourselves eternal.
The very moments that I spend in dictation, in writing, in reading over
what I write, and in correcting it, are so much taken from my life. Every
dot that my secretary makes is so much gone from my allotted time. We write
letters and reply to those of others, our missives cross the sea, and, as
the vessel ploughs its furrow through wave after wave, the moments which we
have to live vanish one by one. Our only gain is that we are thus knit
together in the love of Christ. "Charity suffereth long and is kind;
charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up; beareth
all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
Charity never faileth."(1) It lives always in the heart, and thus our
Nepotian though absent is still present, and widely sundered though we are
has a hand to offer to each. Yes, in him we have a hostage for mutual
charity. Let us then be joined together in spirit, let us bind ourselves
each to each in affection and let us who have lost a son shew the same
fortitude with which the blessed pope Chromatius(2) bore the loss of a
brother. Let every page that we write echo his name, let all our letters
ring with it. If we can no longer clasp him to our hearts, let us hold him
fast in memory; and if we can no longer speak with him, let us never cease
to speak of him.
LETTER LXI: TO VIGILANTIUS.
Vigilantius on his return to the West after his visit to Jerusalem (whither
he had gone as the bearer of letters from Paulinus of Nola--see Letter
LVIII. (?) 11.) had openly accused Jerome of a leaning to the heresy of
Origen. Jerome now writes to him in the most severe tone repudiating the
charge of Origenism and fastening upon his opponent those of ignorance and
blasphemy. He singles out for especial reprobation Vigilantius's
explanation of 'the stone cut out without hands' in Daniel and urges him to
repent of his sins in which case he will have as much chance of forgiveness
as the devil has according to Origen! The letter is often referred to as
showing Jerome's way of dealing with Origen's works. Jerome subsequently
wrote a refutation of Vigilantius's work, of all his controversial writings
the most violent and the least reasonable. See the translation of it in
this volume. See also Letter CIX. The date of this letter is 396 A.D.
1. Since you have refused to believe your own ears, I might justly
decline to satisfy you by a letter; for, if you have failed to credit the
living voice, it is not likely that you will give way to a written paper.
But, since Christ has shown us in Himself a pattern of perfect humility,
bestowing a kiss upon His betrayer and receiving the robber's repentance
upon the cross, I tell you now when absent as I have told you already when
present, that I read and have read Origen only as I read Apollinaris, or
other writers whose books in some things the Church does not receive. I by
no means say that everything contained in such books is to be condemned,
but I admit that there are things in them deserving of censure. Still, as
it is my task and study by reading many authors to cull different flowers
from as large a number as possible, not so much making it an object to
prove all things as to choose what are good. I take up many writers that
from the many I may learn many things; according to that which is written
"reading all things, holding fast those that are good."(1) Hence I am much
surprised that you have tried to fasten upon me the doctrines of Origen, of
whose mistaken teaching on many points you are up to the present altogether
unaware. Am I a heretic? Why pray then do heretics dislike me so? And are
you orthodox, you who either against your convictions and the words of your
own mouth signed(2) unwillingly and are consequently a prevaricator, or
else signed deliberately and are consequently a heretic? You have taken no
account of Egypt; you have relinquished all those provinces where numbers
plead freely and openly for your sect; and you have singled out me for
assault, me who not only censure but publicly condemn all doctrines that
are contrary to the church.
2. Origen is a heretic, true; but what does that take from me who do
not deny that on very many points he is heretical? He has erred concerning
the resurrection of the body, he has erred concerning the condition of
souls, he has erred by supposing it possible that the devil may repent,
and--an error more important than these--he has declared in his commentary
upon Isaiah that the Seraphim mentioned by the prophet(1) are the divine
Son and the Holy Ghost. If I did not allow that he has erred or if I did
not daily anathematize his errors I should be partaker of his fault. For
while we receive what is good in his writings we must on no account bind
ourselves to accept also what is evil. Still in many passages he has
interpreted the scriptures well, has explained obscure places in the
prophets, and has brought to light very great mysteries, both in the old
and in the new testament. If then I have taken over what is good in him and
have either cut away or altered or ignored what is evil, am I to be
regarded as guilty on the score that through my agency those who read Latin
receive the good in his writings without knowing anything of the bad? If
this be a crime the confessor Hilary must be convicted; for he has rendered
from Greek into Latin Origen's Explanation of the Psalms and his Homilies
on Job. Eusebius of Vercellae, who witnessed a like confession, must also
be held in fault; for he has translated into our tongue the Commentaries
upon all the Psalms of his heretical namesake, omitting however the unsound
portions and rendering only those parts which are profitable. I say nothing
of Victorinus of Petavium and others who have merely followed and expanded
Origen in their explanation of the scriptures. Were I to do so, I might
seem less anxious to defend myself than to find for myself companions in
guilt. I will come to your own case: Why do you keep copies of his
treatises on Job? In these, while arguing against the devil and concerning
the stars and heavens, he has said certain things which the Church does not
receive. Is it for you alone, with that very wise head of yours, to pass
sentence upon all writers Greek and Latin, with a wave of your censor's
wand to eject some from our libraries and to admit others, and as the whim
takes you to pronounce me either a Catholic or a heretic? And am I to be
forbidden to reject things which are wrong and to condemn what I have often
condemned already? Read what I have written upon the epistle to the
Ephesians, read my other works, particularly my commentary upon
Ecclesiastes, and you will clearly see that from my youth up I have never
been terrified by any man's influence into acquiescence in heretical
pravity.
3. It is no small gain to know your own ignorance. It is a man's wisdom
to know his own measure, that he may not be led away at the instigation of
the devil to make the whole world a witness of his incapacity. You are
bent, I suppose, on magnifying yourself and boast in your own country that
I found myself unable to answer your eloquence and that I dreaded in you
the sharp satire of a Chrysippus.(1) Christian modesty holds me back and I
do not wish to lay open the retirement of my poor cell with biting words.
Otherwise I should soon shew up all your bravery and your parade of
triumph.(2) But these I leave to others either to talk of or to laugh at;
while for my own part as a Christian speaking to a Christian I beseech you
my brother not to pretend to know more than you do, lest your pen may
proclaim your innocence and simplicity, or at any rate those qualities of
which I say nothing but which, though you do not see them in yourself
others see in you. For then you will give everyone reason to laugh at your
folly. From your earliest childhood you have been taught other lessons and
have been used to a different kind of schooling. One and the same person
can hardly be a tester both of gold coins on the counter and also of the
scriptures, or be a connoisseur of wines and an adept in expounding
prophets or apostles.(3) As for me, you tear me limb from limb, our
reverend brother Oceanus you charge with heresy, you dislike the judgment
of the presbyters Vincent and Paulinian, and our brother Eusebius also
displeases you. You alone are to be our Cato, the most eloquent of the
Roman race, and you wish us to accept what you say as the words of prudence
herself. Pray call to mind the day when I preached on the resurrection and
on the reality of the risen body, and when you jumped up beside me and
clapped your hands and stamped your feet and applauded my orthodoxy. Now,
however, that you have taken to sea travelling the stench of the bilge
water has affected your head, and you have called me to mind only as a
heretic. What can I do for you? I believed the letters of the reverend
presbyter Paulinus, and it did not occur to me that his judgment concerning
you could be wrong. And although, the moment that you handed me the letter,
I noticed a certain incoherency in your language, yet I fancied this due to
want of culture and knowledge in you and not to an unsettled brain. I do
not censure the reverend writer who preferred, no doubt, in writing to me
to keep back what he knew rather than to accuse in his missive one who was
both under his patronage and entrusted with his letter; but I find fault
with myself that I have rested in another's judgment rather than my own,
and that, while my eyes saw one thing, I believed on the evidence of a
scrap of paper something else than what I saw.
4. Wherefore cease to worry me and to overwhelm me with your scrolls.
Spare at least your money with which you hire secretaries and copyists,
employing the same persons to write for you and to applaud you. Possibly
their praise is due to the fact that they make a profit out of writing for
you. If you wish to exercise your mind, hand yourself over to the teachers
of grammar and rhetoric, learn logic, have yourself instructed in the
schools of the philosophers; and when you have learned all these things you
will perhaps begin to hold your tongue. And yet I are acting foolishly in
seeking teachers for one who is competent to teach everyone, and in trying
to limit the utterance of one who does not know how to speak yet cannot
remain silent. The old Greek proverb is quite true "A lyre is of no use to
an ass."(1) For my part I imagine that even your name was given you out of
contrariety.(2) For your whole mind slumbers and you actually snore, so
profound is the sleep--or rather the lethargy--in which you are plunged. In
fact amongst the other blasphemies which with sacrilegious lips you have
uttered you have dared to say that the mountain in Daniel(2) out of which
the stone was cut without hands is the devil, and that the stone is Christ,
who having taken a body from Adam (whose sins had before connected him with
the devil) is born of a virgin to separate mankind from i the mountain,
that is, from the devil. Your tongue deserves to be cut out and torn into
fragments. Can any true Christian explain this image of the devil instead
of referring it to God the Father Almighty, or defile the ears of the whole
world with so frightful an enormity? If your explanation has ever been
accepted by any--I will not say Catholic but--heretic or heathen, let your
words be regarded as pious. If on the other hand the Church of Christ has
never yet heard of such an impiety, and if yours has been the first mouth
through which he who once said "I will be like the Most High"(4) has
declared that he is the mountain spoken of by Daniel, then repent, put on
sackcloth and ashes, and with fast-flowing tears wash away your awful
guilt; if so be that this impiety may be forgiven you, and, supposing
Origen's heresy to be true, that you may obtain pardon when the devil
himself shall obtain it, the devil who has never been convicted of greater
blasphemy than that which he has uttered through you. Your insult offered
to myself I bear with patience: your impiety towards God I cannot bear.
Accordingly I may seem to have been somewhat more acrid in this latter part
of my letter than I declared I would be at the outset. Yet having once
before repented and asked pardon of me, it is extremely foolish in you
again to commit a sin for which you must anew do penance. May Christ give
you grace to hear and to hold your peace, to understand and so to speak.
LETTER LXII: TO TRANQUILLINUS.
Tranquillinus, one of Jerome's Roman friends, had written (1) to tell him
of the stand that Oceanus was making against the Origenists at Rome, and
(2) to ask whether any parts of Origen's works might be studied with safety
and profit. Jerome welcomes the tidings about Oceanus and answers the
question of Tranquillinus in the affirmative. He classes Origen with
Tertullian, Apollinaris and others whose works continued to he read in
spite of their heresies. Written in 396 or 397 A. D.
1. Though I formerly doubted the fact, I have now proved that the links
which bind spirit to spirit are stronger than any physical bond. For you,
my reverend friend, cling to me with all your soul, and I am united to you
by the love of Christ. I speak simply and sincerely to your spotless heart:
the very paper on which you write, the very letters which you have formed--
voiceless though they are--in-spire in me a sense of your affection.
2. You tell me that many have been deceived by the mistaken teaching of
Origen, and that that saintly man, my son Oceanus, is doing battle with
their madness. I grieve to think that simple folk have been thrown off
their balance, but I am rejoiced to know that one so learned as Oceanus is
doing his best to set them right again. Moreover you ask me, insignificant
though I am, for an opinion as to the advisability of reading Origen's
works. Are we, you say, to reject him altogether with our brother
Faustinus, or are we, as others tell us, to read him in part? My opinion is
that we should sometimes read him for his learning just as we read
Tertullian, Novatus, Arnobius, Apollinarius and some other church writers
both Greek and Latin, and that we should select what is good and avoid what
is bad in their writings according to the words of the Apostle, "Prove all
things: hold fast that which is good"(1) Those, however, who are led by
some perversity in their dispositions to conceive for him too much fondness
or too much aversion seem to me to lie under the curse of the Prophet:--
"Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil; that put bitter for sweet
and sweet for bitter!"(1) For while the ability of his teaching must not
lead us to embrace his wrong opinions, the wrongness of his opinions should
not cause us altogether to reject the useful commentaries which he has
published on the holy scriptures. But if his admirers and his detractors
are bent on having a tug of war one against the other, and if, seeking no
mean and observing no moderation, they must either approve or disapprove
his works indiscriminately, I would choose rather to be a pious boor than a
learned blasphemer. Our reverend brother, Tatian the deacon, heartily
salutes you.
LETTER LXIII: TO THEOPHILUS.
When the dispute arose between Jerome and Epiphanius on the one side and
Rufinus and John of Jerusalem on the other (see Letter LI.), Theophilus
bishop of Alexandria, being appealed to by the latter sent the presbyter
Isidore to report to him on the matter. Isidore reported against Jerome and
consequently Theophilus refused to answer several of his letters. Finally
he wrote counselling him to obey the canons of the church. Jerome replies
that to do this has always been his first object. He then remonstrates with
Theophilus on his too great leniency towards the Origenists and declares it
to be productive of the worst results. The date of the letter is probably
397 A.D.
Jerome to the most blessed pope(2) Theophilus.
1. Your holiness will remember that at the time when you kept silence
towards me, I never ceased to do my duty by writing to you, not taking so
much into account what you in the exercise of your discretion were then
doing as what it became me to do. And now that I have received a letter
from your grace, I see that my reading of the gospel has not been without
fruit. For if the frequent prayers of a woman changed the determination of
an unyielding judge,(3) how much more must my constant appeals have
softened a fatherly heart Auks yours?
2. I thank you for your reminder concerning the canons of the Church.
Truly, "whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he
receiveth."(4) Still I would assure you that nothing is more my aim than to
maintain the rights of Christ, to keep to the lines laid down by the
fathers, and always to remember the faith of Rome; that faith which is
praised by the lips of an apostle,(1) and of which the Alexandrian church
boasts to be a sharer.
3. Many religious persons are displeased that you are so long-suffering
in regard to that shocking heresy,(2) and that you suppose yourself able by
such lenity to amend those who are attacking the Church's vitals. They
believe that, while you are waiting for the penitence of a few, your action
is fostering the boldness of abandoned men and making their party stronger.
Farewell in Christ.
LETTER LXIV: TO FABIOLA.
Fabiola's visit to Bethlehem had been shortened by the threatened invasion
of the Huns which compelled Jerome and his friends to take refuge for a
time on the seaboard of Palestine. Fabiola here took leave of her
companions and set sail for Italy, but not until Jerome had completed this
letter for her use ( 22). It contains a mystical account of the vestments
of the High Priest worked out with Jerome's usual ingenuity and learning.
Similar treatises are ascribed to Tertullian and to Hosius bishop of
Cordova, but these have long since perished. Its date is 396 or 397 A.D.
LETTER LXV: TO PRINCIPIA.
A commentary on Ps. XLV. addressed to Marcella's friend and companion
Principia (see Letter CXXVII.). Jerome prefaces what he has to say by a
defence of his practice of writing for women, a practice which had exposed
him to many foolish sneers. He deals with the same subject in his
dedication of the Commentary of Sophronius. The date of the letter is 397
A.D.
LETTER LXVI: TO PAMMACHIUS.
Pammachius a Roman senator, had lost his wife Paulina, one of Paula's
daughters, while she was still in the flower of her youth. It was not till
two years had elapsed that Jerome ventured to write to him; and when he did
so he dwelt but little on the life and virtues of Paulina. Probably there
was but little to tell. The greater part of the letter is taken up with
commendation of Pammachius himself who, in spite of his high rank and
position, had become a monk and was now living a life of severe self-
denial. Jerome speaks approvingly of the Hospice for Strangers which, in
conjunction with Fabiola, Pammachius had set up at Portus, and describes
his own somewhat similar institutions at Bethlehem. He also mentions Paula,
Eustochium, and the dead Blaesilla, all in terms of the highest praise. The
date of the letter is 397 A.D.
1. Supposing a wound to be healed and a scar to have been formed upon
the skin, any course of treatment designed to remove the mark must in its
effort to improve the appearance renew the smart of the original wound.
After two years of inopportune silence my condolence now comes rather late;
yet even so I am afraid that my present speech may be still more
inopportune. I fear lest in touching the sore spot in your heart I may by
my words inflame afresh a wound which time and reflection have availed to
cure. For who can have ears so dull or hearts so flinty as to hear the name
of your Paulina without weeping? Even though reared on the milk of
Hyrcanian tigresses(1) they must still shed tears. Who can with dry eyes
see thus untimely cut down and withered an opening rose, an undeveloped
bud,(2) which has not yet formed itself into a cup nor spread forth the
proud display of its crimson petals? In her a most priceless pearl is
broken. In her a vivid emerald is shattered. Sickness alone shews us the
blessedness of health. We realize better what we have had when we cease to
have it.
2. The good ground of which we read in the parable brought forth fruit,
some an hundred-fold, some sixtyfold, and some thirtyfold.(3) In this
threefold yield I recognize an emblem of the three different rewards of
Christ which have fallen to three women(4) closely united in blood and
moral excellence. Eustochium culls the flowers of virginity. Paula sweeps
the toilsome threshing floor of widowhood. Paulina keeps the bed undefiled
of marriage. A mother with such daughters wins for herself on earth all
that Christ has promised to give in heaven. Then to complete the team--if I
may so call it--of four saints turned out by a single family, and to match
the women's virtues by those of a man, the three have a fit companion in
Pammachius who is a cherub such as Ezekiel describes,(5) brother-in-law to
the first. son-in-law to the second, husband to the third. Husband did I
say? Nay, rather a most devoted brother; for the language of marriage is
inadequate to describe the holy bonds of the Spirit. Of this team Jesus
holds the reins, and it is of steeds like these that Habakkuk sings: "ride
upon thy horses and let thy riding be salvation."(6) With like resolve if
with unlike speed they strain after the victor's palm. Their colours are
different; their object is the same. They are harnessed in one yoke, they
obey one driver, not waiting for the lash but answering the call of his
voice with fresh efforts.
3. Let me use for a moment the language of philosophy. According to the
Stoics there are four virtues so closely related and mutually coherent that
he who lacks one lacks all. They are prudence, justice, fortitude, and
temperance.(1) While all of you possess the four, yet each is remarkable
for one. You have prudence, your mother has justice, your virgin sister has
fortitude, your wedded wife has temperance. I speak of you as wise, for who
can be wiser than one who, despising the folly of the world, has followed
Christ "the power of God and the wisdom of God"?(2) Or what better instance
can there be of justice than your mother, who having divided her substance
among her offspring has taught them by her own contempt of riches the true
object on which to fix their affections? Who has set a better example of
courage than Eustochium, who by resolving to be a virgin has breached the
gates of the nobility and broken down the pride of a consular house? The
first of Roman ladies, she has brought under the yoke the first of Roman
families. Has there ever been temperance greater than that of Paulina, who,
reading the words of the apostle: "marriage is honourable in all and the
bed unde filed,"(3) and not presuming to aspire to the happiness of her
virgin sister or the continence of her widowed mother, has preferred to
keep to the safe track of a lower path rather than treading on air to lose
herself in the clouds? When once she had entered upon the married state,
her one thought day and night was that, as soon as her union should be
blessed with offspring, she would live thenceforth in the second degree of
chastity,(4) and Though woman, foremost in the high emprise,(5) would
induce her husband to follow a like course. She would not forsake him but
looked for the day when he would become a companion in salvation. Finding
by several miscarriages that her womb was not barren, she could not give up
all hope of having children and had to allow her own reluctance to give way
to the eagerness of her mother-in-law and the chagrin of her husband. Thus
she suffered much as Rachel suffered,(6) although instead of bringing forth
like her a son of pangs and of the right hand,(7) the heir she had longed
for was no other than her husband. I have learned on good authority that
her wish in submitting herself to her husband was not to take advantage of
God's primitive command "Be faithful and multiply and replenish the
earth"(8) but that she only desired children that she might bring forth
virgins to Christ.
4. We read that the wife of Phinehas the priest, on hearing that the
ark of the Lord had been taken, was seized suddenly with the pains of
travail and that she brought forth a son Ichabod and died a mother in the
hands of the women who nursed her.(1) Rachel's son is called Benjamin, that
is 'son of excellence' Or 'of the right hand'; but the son of the other,
afterwards to be a distinguished priest of God, derives his name from the
ark.(2) The same thing has come to pass in our own day, for since Paulina
fell asleep the Church has posthumously borne the monk Pammachius, a
patrician by his parentage and marriage, rich in alms, and lofty in
lowliness. The apostle writes to the Corinthians, "Ye see your calling,
brethren, how that not many wise men, not many noble are called."(3) The
conditions of the nascent church required this to be so that the grain of
mustard seed might grow up little by little into a tree,(4) and that the
leaven of the gospel might gradually raise more and more the whole lump of
the church.(5) In our day Rome possesses what the world in days gone by
knew not of. Then few of the wise or mighty or noble were Christians; now
many wise powerful and noble are not Christians only but even monks. And
among them all my Pammachius is the wisest, the mightiest, and the noblest;
great among the great, a leader among leaders, he is the commander in chief
of all monks. He and others like him are the offspring which Paulina
desired to have in her life time and which she has given us in her death.
"Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear; break forth into singing and cry
aloud, thou that didst not travail with child";(6) for in a moment thou
hast brought forth as many sons as there are poor men in Rome.
5. The glowing gems which in old days adorned the neck and face of
Paulina now purchase food for the needy. Her silk dresses and gold brocades
are exchanged for soft woollen garments intended to keep out the cold and
not to expose the body to vain admiration. All that formerly ministered to
luxury is now at the service of virtue. That blind man holding out his
hand, and often crying aloud when there is none to hear, is the heir of
Paulina, is co-heir with Pammachius. That poor cripple who can scarcely
drag himself along, owes his support to the help of a tender girl. Those
doors which of old poured forth crowds of visitors, are now beset only by
the wretched. One suffers from a dropsy, big with death; another mute and
without the means of begging, begs the more appealingly because he cannot
beg; another maimed from his childhood implores an alms which he may not
himself enjoy. Still another has his limbs rotted with jaundice and lives
on after his body has become a corpse. To use the language of Virgil:
"Had I a hundred tongues, a hundred lips,
I could not tell men's countless sufferings."(1)
Such is the bodyguard which accompanies Pammachius wherever he walks; in
the persons of such he ministers to Christ Himself; and their squalor
serves to whiten his soul. Thus he speeds on his way to heaven, beneficent
as a giver of games to the poor, and kind as a provider of shows for the
needy. Other husbands scatter on the graves of their wives violets, roses,
lilies, and purple flowers; and assuage the grief of their hearts by
fulfilling this tender duty. Our dear Pammachius also waters the holy ashes
and the revered bones of Paulina, but it is with the balm of almsgiving.
These are the confections and the perfumes with which be cherishes the dead
embers of his wife knowing that it is written: "Water will quench a flaming
fire; and alms maketh an atonement for sins."(2) What great power
compassion has and what high rewards it is destined to win, the blessed
Cyprian sets forth in an extensive work.(3) It is proved also by the
counsel of Daniel who desired the most impious of kings--had he been
willing to hear him--to be saved by shewing mercy to the poor.(4) Paulina's
mother may well be glad of Paulina's heir. She cannot regret that her
daughter's wealth has passed into new hands when she sees it still spent
upon the objects she had at heart. Nay, rather she must congratulate
herself that without any exertion of her own her wishes are being carried
out. The sum available for distribution is the same as before: only the
distributor is changed.
6. Who can credit the fact that one, who is the glory of the Furian
stock and whose grandfathers and great grandfathers have been consuls,
moves amid the senators in their purple clothed in sombre garb, and that,
so far from blushing when he meets the eyes of his companions, he actually
derides those who deride him! "There is a shame that leadeth to death and
there is a shame that leadeth to life."(6) It is a monk's first virtue to
despise the judgments of men and always to remember the apostle's words:--
"If I yet pleased men, I should not be tile servant of Christ."(5) In the
same sense the Lord says to the prophets that He has made their face a
brazen city and a stone of adamant and an iron pillar,(1) to the end that
they shall not be afraid of the insults of the people but shall by the
sternness of their looks discompose the effrontery of those who sneered at
them. A finely strung mind is more readily overcome by contumely than by
terror. And men whom no tortures can overawe are sometimes prevailed over
by the fear of shame. Surely it is no small thing for a man of birth,
eloquence, and wealth to avoid the company of the powerful in the streets,
to mingle with the crowd, to cleave to the poor, to associate on equal
terms with the untaught, to cease to be a leader and to become one of the
people. The more he humbles himself, I the more he is exalted.(2)
7. A pearl will shine in the midst of squalor and a gem of the first
water will sparkle in the mire. This is what the Lord promised when He
said: "Them that honour me I will honour."(3) Others may understand this of
the future when sorrow shall be turned into joy and when, although the
world shall pass away, the saints shall receive a crown which shall never
pass. But I for my part see that the promises made to the saints are
fulfilled even in this present life. Before he began to serve Christ with
his whole heart, Pammachius was a well known person in the senate. Still
there were many other senators who wore the badges of proconsular rank. The
whole world is filled with similar decorations. He was in the first rank it
is true, but there were others in it besides him. Whilst he took precedence
of some, others took precedence of him. The most distinguished privilege
loses its prestige when lavished on a crowd, and dignities themselves
become less dignified in the eyes of good men when held by persons who have
no dignity. Thus Tully finely says of Caesar, when he wished to advance
some of his adherents, "he did not so much honour them as dishonour the
honourable positions in which he placed them."(4) To-day all the churches
of Christ are talking of Pammachius. The whole world admires as a poor man
one whom heretofore it ignored as rich. Can anything be more splendid than
the consulate? Yet the honour lasts only for a year and when another has
succeeded to the post its former occupant gives way. Each man's laurels are
i lost in the crowd and sometimes triumphs themselves are marred by the
shortcomings of those who celebrate them. An office which was once handed
down from patrician to patrician, which only men of noble birth could hold,
of which the consul Marius--victor though he was over Numidia and the
Teutons and the Cimbri--was held unworthy on account of the obscurity of
his family, and which Scipio won before his time as the reward of valour,--
this great office is now obtained by merely belonging to the army; and the
shining robe of victory(1) now envelops men who a little while ago were
country boors. Thus we have received more than we have given. The things we
have renounced are small; the things we possess are great. All that Christ
promises is duly performed and for what we have given up we have received
an hundredfold.(2) This was the ground in which Isaac sowed his seed,(3)
Isaac who in his readiness to die(4) bore the cross of the Gospel before
the Gospel came.
8. "If thou wilt be perfect," the Lord says, "go and sell that thou
hast and give to the poor .... and come and follow me."(5) If thou wilt be
perfect. Great enterprises are always left to the free choice of those who
hear of them. Thus the apostle refrains from making virginity a positive
duty, because the Lord in speaking of eunuchs who had made themselves such
for the kingdom of heaven's sake finally said: "He that is able to receive
it, let him receive it."(6) For, to quote the apostle, "it is not of him
that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy."(7)
If thou wilt be perfect. There is no compulsion laid upon you: if you are
to win the prize it must be by the exercise of your own free will. If
therefore you will to be perfect and desire to be as the prophets, as the
apostles, as Christ Himself, sell not a part of your substance (lest the
fear of want become an occasion of unfaithfulness, and so you perish with
Ananias and Sapphira(8)) but all that you have. And when you have sold all,
give the proceeds not to the wealthy or to the high-minded but to the poor.
Give each man enough for his immediate need but do not give money to swell
what a man has already. "Thou shall not muzzle the mouth of the ox that
treadeth out the corn,"(9) and "the labourer is worthy of his reward."(10)
Again "they which wait at the altar are partakers with the altar."(11)
Remember also these words: "having, food and raiment let us be therewith
content."(12) Where you see smoking dishes, steaming pheasants, massive
silver plate, spirited nags, long-haired boy-slaves, expensive clothing,
and embroidered hangings, give nothing there. For he to whom you would give
is richer than you the giver. It is moreover a kind of sacrilege to give
what belongs to the poor to those who are not poor. Yet to be a perfect and
complete Christian it is not enough to despise wealth or to squander and
fling away one's money, a thing which can be lost and found in a single
moment. Crates the Theban(1) did this, so did Antisthenes and several
others, whose lives shew them to have had many faults. The disciple of
Christ must do more for the attainment of spiritual glory than the
philosopher of the world, than the venal slave of flying rumours and of the
people's breath. It is not enough for you to despise wealth unless you
follow Christ as well. And only he follows Christ who forsakes his sins and
walks hand in hand with virtue. We know that Christ is wisdom. He is the
treasure which in the scriptures a man finds in his field.(2) He is the
peerless gem which is bought by selling many pearls.(3) But if you love a
captive woman, that is, worldly wisdom, and if no beauty but hers attracts
you, make her bald and cut off her alluring hair, that is to say, the
graces of style, and pare away her dead nails.(4) Wash her with the nitre
of which the prophet speaks,(5) and then take your ease with her and say
"Her left hand is under my head, and her right hand doth embrace me."(6)
Then shall the captive bring to you many children; from a Moabitess(7) she
shall become an Israelitish woman. Christ is that sanctification without
which no man shall see the face of God. Christ is our redemption, for He is
at once our Redeemer and our Ransom.(8) Christ is all, that he who has left
all for Christ may find One in place of all, and may be able to proclaim
freely. "The Lord is my portion."(9)
9. I see clearly that you have a warm affection for divine learning and
that far from trying--like some rash persons--to teach that of which you
are yourself ignorant you make it your first object to learn what you are
going to teach. Your letters in their simplicity are redolent of the
prophets and savour strongly of the apostles. You do not affect a stilted
eloquence, nor boylike balance shallow sentences in clauses neatly- turned.
The quickly frothing foam disappears with equal quickness; and a tumour
though it enlarges the size of the body is injurious to health. It is
moreover a shrewd maxim, this of Cato, "Fast enough if well enough." Long
ago it is true in the days of our youth we laughed outright at this dictum
when the finished orator(10) used it in his exordium. I fancy you remember
the mistake(11) shared by the speaker in our Athenaeum and how the whole
room resounded with the cry taken up by the students" Fast enough if well
enough." According to Fabius(1) crafts would be sure to prosper if none but
craftsmen were allowed to criticise them. No man can adequately estimate a
poet unless he is competent himself to write verse No man can comprehend
philosophers, unless he is acquainted with the various theories that they
have held. Material and visible products are best appraised by those who
make them. To what a cruel lot we men of letters are exposed you may gather
from the fact that we are forced to rely on the judgment of the public; and
many a man is in company a formidable opponent who would certainly be
despised could he be seen alone. I have touched on this in passing to make
you content, if possible, with the ear of the learned. Disregard the
remarks which uneducated persons make concerning your ability; but day by
day imbibe the marrow of the prophets, that you may know the mystery of
Christ and share this mystery with the patriarchs.
10. Whether you read or write, whether you wake or sleep, let the
herdsman's horn of Amos(2) always ring in your ears. Let the sound of the
clarion arouse your soul, let the divine love carry you out of yourself;
and then seek upon your bed him whom your soul loveth,(3) and boldly say:
"I sleep, but my heart waketh."(4) And when you have found him and taken
hold of him, let him not go. And if you fall asleep for a moment and He
escapes from your hands, do not forthwith despair. Go out into the streets
and charge the daughters of Jerusalem: then shall you find him lying clown
in the noontide weary and drunk with passion, or wet with the dew of night
by the flocks of his companions, or fragrant with many kinds of spices,
amid the apples of the garden.(5) There give to him your breasts, let him
suck your learned bosom, let him rest in the midst of his heritage,(6) his
feathers as those of a dove overlaid with silver and his inward parts with
the brightness of gold. This young child, this mere boy, who is fed on
butter and honey,(7) and who is reared among curdled mountains,(8) quickly
grows up to manhood, speedily spoils all(9) that is opposed to him in you,
and when the time is ripe plunders [the spiritual] Damascus and puts in
chains the king of [the spiritual] Assyria.
11. I hear that you have erected a hospice for strangers at Portus and
that you have planted a twig from the tree of Abraham(10) upon the
Ausonian shore. Like Aeneas you are tracing the outlines of a new
encampment; only that, whereas he, when he reached the waters of the Tiber,
under pressure of want had to eat the square flat cakes which formed the
tables spoken of by the oracle,(1) you are able to build a house of bread
to rival this little village of Bethlehem(2) wherein I am staying; and here
after their long privations you propose to satisfy travellers with sudden
plenty. Well done. You have surpassed my poor beginning.(3) You have
reached the highest point. You have made your way from the root to the top
of the tree. You are the first of monks in the first city of the world: you
do right therefore to follow the first of the patriarchs. Let Lot, whose
name means 'one who turns aside' choose the plain(4) and let him follow the
left and easy branch of the famous letter of Pythagoras.(5) But do you make
ready for yourself a monument like Sarah's(6) on steep and rocky heights.
Let the City of Books be near;(7) and when you have destroyed the giants,
the sons of Anak,(8) make over your heritage to joy and merriment.(9)
Abraham was rich in gold and silver and cattle, in substance and in
raiment: his household was so large that on an emergency he could bring a
picked body of young men into the field, and could pursue as far as Dan and
then slay four kings who bad already put five kings to flight.(10)
Frequently exercising hospitality and never turning any man away from his
door, be was accounted worthy at last to entertain God himself. He was not
satisfied with giving orders to his servants and hand-maids to attend to
his guests, nor did he lessen the favour he conferred by leaving others to
care for them; but as though he had found a prize, he and Sarah his wife
gave themselves to the duties of hospitality. With his own hands he washed
the feet of his guests, upon his own shoulders he brought home a fat calf
from the herd. While the strangers dined he stood by to serve them, and set
before them the dishes cooked by Sarah's hands--though meaning to fast
himself.
12. The regard which I feel for you, my dear brother, makes me remind
you of these things; for you must offer to Christ not only your money but
yourself, to be a "living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is
your reasonable service,"(11) and you must imitate the son of man who "came
not to be ministered unto but to minister."(1) What the patriarch did for
strangers that our Lord and Master did for His servants and disciples.
"Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life. But,"
says the devil, "touch his flesh and he will curse thee to thy face."(2)
The old enemy knows that the battle with impurity is a harder one than that
with covetousness. It is easy to cast off what clings to us from without,
but a war within our borders involves far greater peril. We have to
unfasten things joined together, we have to sunder things firmly united.
Zacchus was rich while the apostles were poor. lie restored fourfold all
that he had taken and gave to the poor the half of his remaining substance.
He welcomed Christ as his guest, and salvation came unto his house.(3) And
yet because he was little of stature and could not reach the apostolic
standard of height, he was not numbered with the twelve apostles. Now as
regards wealth the apostles gave up nothing at all, but as regards will
they one and all gave up the whole world. If we offer to Christ our souls
as well as our riches, he will gladly receive our offering. But if we give
to God only those things which are without while we give to the devil those
things which are within, the division is not fair, and the divine voice
says: "Hast thou not sinned in offering a right, and yet not dividing
aright?"(4)
13. That you, the leader of the patrician order, first set the example
of turning monk should not be to you an occasion of boasting hut rather one
of humility, knowing as you do that the Son of God became the Son of man.
However low you may abase yourself, you cannot be more lowly than Christ.
Even supposing that you walk barefooted, that you dress in sombre garb,
that you rank yourself with the poor, that you condescend to enter the
tenements of the needy, that you are eyes to the blind, hands to the weak,
feet to the lame, that you carry water and hew wood and make fires--even
supposing that you do all this, where are the chains, the buffets, the
spittings, the scourgings, the gibbet, the death which the Lord endured?
And even when you have done all the things I have mentioned, you are still
surpassed by your sister Eustochium as well as by Paula: for considering
the weakness of their sex they have done more work relatively if less
absolutely, than you. I myself was not at Rome but in the desert--would
that I had continued there--at the time when your father-in- law Toxotius
was still alive and his daughters were still given up to the world. But I
have heard that they were too dainty to walk in the muddy streets, that
they were carried about in the arms of eunuchs, that they disliked crossing
uneven ground, that they found a silk dress a burthen and felt sunshine too
scorching. But now, squalid and sombre in their dress, they are positive
heroines in comparison with what they used to be. They trim lamps, light
fires, sweep floors, clean vegetables, put heads of cabbage in the pot to
boil, lay tables, hand cups, help dishes and run to and fro to wait on
others. And yet there is no lack of virgins under the same roof with them.
Is it then that they have no servants upon whom they can lay these duties?
Surely not. They are unwilling that others should surpass them in physical
toil whom they themselves surpass in rigour of mind. I say all this not
because I doubt your mental ardour but that I may quicken the pace at which
you are running, and in the heat of battle may add warmth to your warmth.
14. I for my part am building in this province a monastery and a
hospice close by; so that, if Joseph and Mary chance to come to Bethlehem,
they may not fail to find shelter and welcome. Indeed, the number of monks
who flock here from all quarters of the world is so overwhelming that I can
neither desist from my enterprise nor bear so great a burthen. The warning
of the gospel has been all but fulfilled in me, for I did not sufficiently
count the cost of the tower I was about to build;(1) accordingly I have
been constrained to send my brother Paulinian(2) to Italy to sell some
ruinous villas which have escaped the hands of the barbarians, and also the
property inherited from our common parents. For I am loth, now that I have
begun it, to give up ministering to the saints, lest I incur the ridicule
of carping and envious persons.
15. Now that I have come to the conclusion of my letter I recall my
metaphor of the four-horse team, and recollect that Blaesilla would have
made a fifth had she been spared to share your resolve. I had almost
forgotten to mention her, the first of you all to go to meet the Lord. You
who once were five I now see to be two and three. Blaesilla and her sister
Paulina rest in sweet sleep: you with the two others on either side of you
will fly upward to Christ more easily.
LETTER LXVII: FROM AUGUSTINE.
Jerome having written him a short letter (no longer extant) Augustine
now replies. He speaks with approval of Jerome's treatise On Famous Men,
incorrectly called the Epitaph (see Letter CXII. 3). He also repeats his
objections to Jerome's account of the quarrel between Paul and Peter at
Antioch and then concludes with a request that he will draw up a short
notice of the principal heresies condemned by the Church.
Like the preceding letter of Augustine (Letter LVI.) this also failed
to reach Jerome. It was however published in the West, but without
Augustine's knowledge and by degrees its contents found their way to
Bethlehem where they caused much annoyance and pain. The date of the letter
is 397 A.D. In Augustine's correspondence in this Library it is printed in
full as Letter XL (PNFI1-4.TXT).
LETTER LXVIII: TO CASTRUTIUS.
Castrutius, a blind man of Pannonia, had set out for Bethlehem to visit
Jerome. However, on reaching Cissa (whether that in Thrace or that on the
Adriatic is uncertain) he was induced by his friends to turn back. Jerome
writes to thank him for his intention and to console him for his inability
to carry it out. He then tries to comfort him in his blindness(1) by
referring to Christ's words concerning the man born blind (Joh. ix.(3)
and(2) by telling him the story of Antony and Didymus. The date of the
letter is 397 A.D.
1. My reverend son Heraclius the deacon has reported to me that in your
eagerness to see me you came as far as Cissa, and that, though a Pannonian
and consequently a land animal, you did not quail before the surges of the
Adriatic and the dangers of the gean and Ionian seas. He tells me that you
would have actually accomplished your purpose, had not our brethren with
affectionate care held you back. I thank you all the same and regard it as
a kindness shewn. For in the case of friends one must accept the will for
the deed. Enemies often give us the latter, but only sincere attachment can
bring us the former. And now that I am writing to you I beseech you do not
regard the bodily affliction which has befallen you as due to sin. When the
Apostles speculated concerning the man that was born blind from the womb
and asked our Lord and Saviour: "Who did sin, this man or his parents, that
he was born blind?" they were told "Neither hath this man sinned nor his
parents, but that the works of God should be made manifest in him."(1) Do
we not see numbers of heathens, Jews, heretics and men of various opinions
rolling in the mire of lust, bathed in blood, surpassing wolves in ferocity
and kites in rapacity, and for all this the plague does not come nigh their
dwellings?(2) They are not smitten as other men, and accordingly they wax
insolent against God and lift up their faces even to heaven. We know on the
other hand that holy men are afflicted with sicknesses, miseries, and want,
and perhaps they are tempted to say "Verily I have cleansed my heart in
vain, and washed my hands in innocency." Yet immediately they go on to
reprove themselves, "If I say, I will speak thus; behold I should offend
against the generation of thy children."(1) If you suppose that your
blindness is caused by sin, and that a disease which physicians are often
able to cure is an evidence of God's anger, you will think Isaac a sinner
because he was so wholly sightless that he was deceived into blessing one
whom he did not mean to bless.(2) You will charge Jacob with sin, whose
vision became so dim that he could not see Ephraim and Manasseh,(3)
although with the inner eye and the prophetic spirit he could foresee the
distant future and the Christ that was to come of his royal line.(4) Were
any of the kings holier than Josiah? Yet he was slain by the sword of the
Egyptians.(5) Were there ever loftier saints than Peter and Paul? Yet their
blood stained the blade of Nero. And to say no more of men, did not the Son
of God endure the shame of the cross? And yet you fancy those blessed who
enjoy in this world happiness and pleasure? God's hottest anger against
sinners is when he shews no anger. Wherefore in Ezekiel he says to
Jerusalem: "My jealousy will depart from thee and i will be quiet and will
be no more angry."(6) For "whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and
scourgeth every son whom He receiveth."(7) The father does not instruct his
son unless he loves him. The master does not correct his disciple unless he
sees in him signs of promise. When once the doctor gives over caring for
the patient, it is a sign that he despairs. You should answer thus: "as
Lazarus in his lifetime(8) received evil things so will I now gladly suffer
torments that future glory may be laid up for me." For "affliction shall
not rise up the second time."(9) If Job, a man holy and spotless and
righteous in his generation, suffered terrible afflictions, his own book
explains the reason why.
2. That I may not make myself tedious or exceed the due limits of a
letter by repeating old stories, I will briefly relate to you an incident
which happened in my childhood. The saintly Athanasius bishop of Alexandria
had summoned the blessed Antony to that city to confute the heretics there.
Hereupon Didymus, a man of great learning who had lost his eyes, came to
visit the hermit and, the conversation turning upon the holy scriptures,
Antony could not help admiring his ability and eulogizing his insight. At
last he said: You do not regret, do you, the loss of your eyes? At first
Didymus was ashamed to answer, but when the question had been repeated a
second time and a third, he frankly confessed that his blindness was a
great grief to him. Whereupon Antony said: "I am surprised that a wise man
should grieve at the loss of a faculty which he shares with ants and flies
and gnats, and not rejoice rather in having one of which only saints and
apostles have been thought worthy." From this story you may perceive how
much better it is to have spiritual than carnal vision and to possess eyes
into which the mote of sin cannot fall.(1)
Though you have failed to come this year, I do not yet despair of your
coming. If the reverend deacon(2) who is the bearer of this letter is again
caught in the toils of your affection, and if you come hither in his
company I shall be delighted to welcome you and shall readily acknowledge
that the delay in payment is made up for by the largeness of the interest.
LETTER LXIX: TO OCEANUS.
Oceanus, a Roman nobleman zealous for the faith, had asked Jerome to back
him in a protest against Carterius a Spanish bishop who contrary to the
apostolic rule that a bishop is to be "the husband of one wife" had married
a second time. Jerome refuses to take the line suggested on the ground that
Carterius's first marriage having preceded his baptism cannot be taken into
account. He therefore advises Oceanus to let the matter drop. The date of
the letter is 397 A.D.
1. I never supposed, son Oceanus, that the clemency of the Emperor
would be assailed by criminals, or that persons just released from prison
would after their own experience of its filth and fetters complain of
relaxations allowed to others. In the gospel he who envies another's
salvation is thus addressed: "Friend, is thine eye evil because I am
good?"(3) "God hath concluded them all in sin(4) that he might have mercy
upon all."(5) "When sin abounded grace did much more abound."(6) The first
born of Egypt are slain and not even a beast belonging to Israel is left
behind in Egypt.(7) The heresy of the Cainites rises before me and the once
slain viper lifts up its shattered head, destroying not partially as most
often hitherto but altogether the mystery of Christ.(8) This heresy
declares that there are some sins which Christ cannot cleanse with His
blood, and that the scars left by old transgressions on the body and the
soul are sometimes so deep that they cannot be effaced by the remedy which
He supplies. What else is this but to say that Christ has died in vain? He
has indeed died in vain if there are any whom He cannot make alive. When
John the Baptist points to Christ and says: "Behold the lamb of God which
taketh away the sins(1) of the world"(2) he utters a falsehood if after all
there are persons living whose sins Christ has not taken away. For either
it must be shewn that they are not of the world whom the grace of Christ
thus ignores: or, if it be admitted that they are of the world, we have to
choose between the horns of a dilemma. Either they have been delivered from
their sins, in which case the power of Christ to save all men is proved; or
they remain undelivered and as it were still under the charge of misdoing,
in which case Christ is proved to be powerless. But far be it from us to
believe of the Almighty that He is powerless in aught. For "what things
soever the Father doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise."(3) To ascribe
weakness to the Son is to ascribe it to the Father also. The shepherd
carries the whole sheep and not only this or that part of it: all the
epistles of the apostle(4) speak continually of the grace of Christ. And,
lest a single announcement of this grace might seem a little thing, Peter
says: "Grace unto you and peace be multiplied."(5) The Scripture promises
abundance; yet we affirm scarcity.
2. To what does all this tend, you ask. I reply; you remember the
question that you proposed. It was this. A Spanish bishop named Carterius,
old in years and in the priesthood has married two wives, one before he was
baptized, and, she having died, another since he has passed through the
laver; and you are of opinion that he has violated the precept of the
apostle, who in his list of episcopal qualifications commands that a bishop
shall be "the husband of one wife."(6) I am surprised that you have
pilloried an individual when the whole world is filled with persons
ordained in similar circumstances; I do not mean presbyters or clergy of
lower rank, but speak only of bishops of whom if I were to enumerate them
all one by one I should gather a sufficient number to surpass the crowd
which attended the synod of Ariminum.(7) Still it does not become me to
defend one by incriminating many; nor if reason condemns a sin, to make the
number of those who commit it an excuse for it. At Rome an eloquent pleader
caught me, as the phrase goes, between the horns of a dilemma: whichever
way I turned I was held fast. Is it sinful, said he, to marry a wife, or is
it not sinful? I in my simplicity, not being wary enough to avoid the snare
laid for me, replied that it was not sinful. Then he propounded another
question: Is it good deeds which are done away with in baptism or is it
evil? Here again my simplicity induced me to say that it was sins which
were forgiven. At this point, just as I began to fancy myself secure, the
horns of the dilemma commenced to close in on me from this side and from
that and their points hidden before began to shew themselves. If, said he,
to marry a wife is not sinful, and if baptism forgives sins, all that is
not done away with is held over. On the instant a dark mist rose before my
eyes as though I had been struck by a strong boxer. Yet recalling the
sophism attributed to Chrysippus:(1) "Whether you lie or whether you speak
the truth, in either case you lie," I came to myself again and turned upon
my opponent with a dilemma of my own. Pray tell me, I said, does baptism
make a new man or does it not? He grudgingly admitted that it did. I
pursued my advantage by saying. Does it make him wholly new or only
partially so? He replied, Wholly. Then I asked, Is there nothing then of
the old man held over in baptism? He assented. Hereupon I propounded the
argument; If baptism makes a man new and creates a wholly new being, and if
there is nothing of the old man held over in the new, that which once was
in the old cannot be imputed to the new. At first my thorny friend held his
tongue; afterwards however, making Piso's mistake,(2) though he had nothing
to say he could not remain silent. Sweat stood upon Iris brow, his cheeks
turned pale, his lips trembled, his tongue clove to his mouth, his throat
became dry; and fear (not age) made him cower. At last he broke out in
these words, Have you not read how the apostle permits none to be ordained
priest save the husband of one wife, and that what he lays stress upon is
the fact of the marriage and not the time at which it is contracted? Now as
the fellow had challenged me with syllogisms, and as I saw that he was
feeling his way towards some intricate and awkward questions, I proceeded
to turn his own weapons against him. I said therefore, Whom did the apostle
select for the episcopate, baptized persons or catechumens? He refused to
reply. I however made a fresh onslaught repeating my question a second time
and a third. You would have taken him for Niobe changed to stone by
excessive weeping. I turned to the audience and said: It is all the same to
me, good people, whether I bind my opponent awake or sleeping; but it is
easier to fetter a man who offers no resistance. If those whom the apostle
admits into the ranks of the clergy are not catechumens but the faithful,
and if he who is ordained bishop is always one of the faithful, being one
of the faithful he cannot have the faults of a catechumen imputed to him.
Such were the darts I hurled at my paralysed opponent. Such the quivering
spears I cast at him. At last his mouth opened and he vomited forth the
contents of his mind. Certainly, he blurted out, that is the doctrine of
the apostle Paul.
3. Accordingly I bring out two epistles of the apostle, the first to
Timothy, and the second to Titus. In the first is the following passage:
"If a man desire the office of a bishop he desireth a good work. A bishop
then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good
behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach, not given to wine, no
striker ... but patient, not a brawler, not covetous; one that ruleth well
his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity. (For if
a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the
church of God?) Not a novice lest being lifted up with pride he fall into
the condenmation of the devil. Moreover he must have a good report of them
which are without; lest he fall into reproach and the snare of the
devil."(1) While immediately at the commencement of the epistle to Titus
the following behests are laid down: "For this cause left I thee in Crete
that thou shouldest set in order the things that are wanting, and ordain
elders in every city, as I had appointed thee: if any be blameless, the
husband of one wife, having faithful children not accused of riot or
unruly. For a bishop must be blameless as the steward of God; not self-
willed, not soon angry, not given to wine, no striker, not given to filthy
lucre; but a lover of hospitality, a lover of good men, sober, just, holy,
temperate; holding fast the faithful word as he hath been taught, that he
may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and to convince the
gainsayers."(2) In both epistles commandment is given that only monogamists
should, be chosen for the clerical office whether as bishops or as
presbyters.(3) Indeed with the ancients these names were synonymous, one
alluding to the office, the other to the age of the clergy. No one at any
rate can doubt that the apostle is speaking only of those who have been
baptized. If therefore it in no wise prejudices the case of one who is to
be ordained bishop that before his baptism he has not possessed all the
requisite qualifications (for it is asked what he is and not what he has
been), why should a previous marriage--the one thing which is in itself not
sinful-- prove a hindrance to his ordination? You argue that as his
marriage was not a sin it was not done away with at his baptism. This is
news to me indeed, that what in itself was not a sin is to be reckoned as
such. All fornication and contamination with open vice, impiety towards
God, parricide and incest, the change of the natural use of the sexes into
that which is against nature(1) and all extraordinary lusts are washed away
in the fountain of Christ. Can it be possible that the stains of marriage
are indelible, and that harlotry is judged more leniently than honourable
wedlock? t do not, Carterius might say, hold you to blame for the hosts of
mistresses and the troops of favourites(2) that you have kept; I do not
charge you with your bloodshedding and sow-like wallowings in the mire of
uncleanness: yet you are ready to drag from her grave for my confusion my
poor wife, who has been dead long years, and whom I married that I might be
kept from those sins into which you have fallen. Tell this to the heathen
who form the church's harvest with which she stores her granaries; tell
this to the catechumens who seek admission to the number of the faithful;
tell them, I say, not to contract marriages before their baptism, not to
enter upon honourable wedlock, but like the Scots and the Atacotti(3) and
the people of Plato's republic(4) to have community of wives and no
discrimination of children, nay more, to beware of any semblance even of
matrimony; lest, after they have come to believe in Christ, He shall tell
them that those whom they have had have not been concubines or mistresses
but wedded wives.
4. Let every man examine his own conscience and let him deplore the
violence he has done to it at every period of his life; and then when he
has brought himself to deliver a true judgment on his own former misdeeds,
let him give ear to the chiding of Jesus: "Thou hypocrite, first cast out
the beam out of thine own eye; and then shall thou see clearly to cast out
the mote out of thy brother's eye."(6) Truly like the scribes and pharisees
we strain out the gnat and swallow the camel, we pay tithe of mint and
anise, and we omit the just judgment which God requires.(6) What parallel
can be drawn between a wife and a prostitute? Is it fair to make a marriage
now dissolved by death a ground of accusation, while dissolute living wins
for itself a garland of praise? He, had his former wife lived, would not
have married another; but as for you, bow can you defend the bestial unions
you indiscriminately make? Perhaps indeed you will say that you feared to
contract marriage lest by so doing you might disqualify yourself for
ordination. He took a wife that he might have children by her; you by
taking a harlot have lost the hope of children. He withdrew into the
privacy of his own chamber when he sought to obey nature and to win God's
blessing: "Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth."(1) You on the
contrary outraged public decency in the hot eagerness of your lust. He
covered a lawful indulgence beneath a veil of modesty; you pursued an
unlawful one shamelessly before the eyes of all. For him it is written
"Marriage is honourable and the bed undefiled." while to you the words are
read, "but whoremongers and adulterers God wilt judge,"(2) and "if any man
destroyeth the temple of God, him shall God destroy."(3) All iniquities, we
are told, are forgiven us at our baptism, and when once we have received
God's mercy we need not afterwards dread from Him the severity of a judge.
The apostle says:--"And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye
are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by
the Spirit of our God."(4) All sins then are forgiven; it is an honest and
faithful saying. But I ask you, how comes it that, while your uncleanness
is washed away, my cleanness is made unclean? You reply, "No, it is not
made unclean, it remains just what it was. Had it been uncleanness, it
would have been washed away like mine." I want to know what you mean by
this shuffling. Your remarks seem to have no more point in them than the
round end of a pestle. Is a thing sin because it is not sin? or is a thing
unclean because it is not unclean? The Lord, you say, has not forgiven
because He had nothing to forgive; yet because He has not forgiven, that
which has not been forgiven still remains.
5. What the true effect of baptism is, and what is the real grace
conveyed by water hallowed in Christ, I will presently tell you; meantime I
will deal with this argument as it deserves. 'An ill knot,' says the common
proverb, 'requires but an ill wedge to split it.' The text quoted by the
objector, "a bishop must be the husband of one wife," admits of quite
another explanation. The apostle came of the Jews and the primitive
Christian church was gathered out of the remnants of Israel. Paul knew that
the Law allowed men to have children by several wives,(1) and was aware
that the example of the patriarchs had made polygamy familiar to the
people. Even the very priests might at their own discretion enjoy the same
license.(2) He gave commandment therefore that the priests of the church
should not claim this liberty, that they should not take two wives or three
together, but that they should each have but one wife at one time. Perhaps
you may say that this explanation which I have given is disputed; in that
case listen to another. You must not have a monopoly of bending the Law to
suit your will instead of bending your will to suit the Law. Some by a
strained interpretation say that wives are in this passage to be taken for
churches and husbands for their bishops. A decree was made by the fathers
assembled at the council of Nica(3) that no bishop should be translated
from one church to another, lest scorning the society of a poor yet virgin
see he should seek the embraces of a wealthy and adulterous one. For as the
word logismo'i, that is, "disputings," refers to the fault and misdoing of
sons in the faith,(4) and as the precept concerning the management of a
house refers to the right direction of body and of soul,(5) so by the wives
of the bishops we are to understand their churches. Concerning whom it is
written in Isaiah, "Make haste ye women and come from the show, for it is a
people of no understanding."(6) And again "Rise up, ye women that are
wealthy,(7) and hear my voice."(8) And in the Book of Proverbs, "Who can
find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies. The heart of her
husband doth safely trust in her."(9) In the same book too it is written,
"Every wise woman buildeth her house: but the foolish plucketh it down with
her hands."(10) Nor does this, say they, derogate from the dignity of the
episcopate; for the same figure is used in relation to God. Jeremiah
writes: "As a wife treacherously departeth from her husband, so have ye
dealt treacherously with me, O house of Israel."(11) And the apostle
employs the same comparison: "I have espoused you," he says to his
converts, "to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to
Christ."(12) The word woman is in the Greek ambiguous and should in all
these places be understood as meaning wife. You will say that this
interpretation is harsh and does violence to the sense. In that case give
back to the scripture its simple meaning and save me from the necessity of
fighting you on your own ground.(1) I will ask you the following question,
Can a man who before his baptism has kept a concubine, and after her death
has received baptism and has taken a wife, become a clergyman or not? You
will answer me that he can, because his first partner was a concubine and
not a wife. What the apostle condemns then, it would seem, is not mere
sexual intercourse but marriage contracts and conjugal rights. Many
persons, we see, because of narrow circumstances refuse to take upon them
the burthen of matrimony. Instead of taking wives they live with their
maid-servants and bring up as their own the children which these bear to
them. Thus, if through the bounty of the Emperor they gain for their
mistresses the right of wearing a matron's robes,(2) they will at once come
beneath the yoke of the apostle and sorely against their will will have to
receive their partners as their wedded wives. But, if their poverty
prevents them from obtaining an imperial rescript such as I have mentioned,
the decrees of the Church will vary with the laws of Rome. Be careful
therefore not to interpret the words "the husband of one wife," that is, of
one woman, as approving indiscriminate intercourse and condemning only
contracts of marriage.
I bring forward all these explanations not for the purpose of resisting
the true and simple sense of the words in question but to shew you that you
must take the holy scriptures as they are written, and that you must not
empty of its efficacy the baptismal rite ordained by the Saviour, or render
vain the whole mystery of the cross.
6. Let me now fulfil the promise I made a little while ago and with all
the skill of a rhetorician sing the praises of water and of baptism. In the
beginning the earth was without form and void, there was no dazzling sun or
pale moon, there were no glittering stars. There was nothing but matter
inorganic and invisible, and even this was lost in abysmal depths and
shrouded in a distorting gloom. The Spirit of God above moved, as a
charioteer, over the face of the waters,(3) and produced from them the
infant world, a type of the Christian child that is drawn from the laver of
baptism. A firmament is constructed between heaven and earth, and to this
is allotted the name heaven,--in the Hebrew Shamayim or 'what comes out of
the waters,'--(4) and the waters which are above the heavens are parted
from the others to the praise of God. Wherefore also in the vision of the
prophet Ezekiel there is seen above the cherubim a crystal stretched
forth,(1) that is, the compressed and denser waters. The first living
beings come out of the waters; and believers soar out of the layer with
wings to heaven. Man is formed out of clay(2) and God holds the mystic
waters in the hollow of his hand.(3) In Eden a garden(4) is planted, and a
fountain in the midst of it parts into four heads.(5) This is the same
fountain which Ezekiel later on describes as issuing out of the temple and
flowing towards the rising of the sun, until it heals the bitter waters and
quickens those that are dead.(6) When the world falls into sin nothing but
a flood of waters can cleanse it again. But as soon as the foul bird of
wickedness is driven away, the dove of the Holy Spirit comes to Noah(7) as
it came afterwards to Christ in the Jordan,(8) and, carrying ill its beak a
branch betokening restoration and light, brings tidings of peace to the
whole world. Pharaoh and his host, loth to allow God's people to leave
Egypt, are overwhelmed in the Red Sea figuring thereby our baptism. His
destruction is thus described in the book of Psalms: "Thou didst endow the
sea with virtue through thy power: thou brakest the heads of the dragons in
the waters: thou brakest the heads of leviathan in pieces."(9) For this
reason adders and scorpions haunt dry places(10) and whenever they come
near water behave as if rabid or insane.(11) As wood sweetens Marah so that
seventy palm-trees are watered by its streams, so the cross makes the
waters of the law lifegiving to the seventy who are Christ's apostles.(12)
It is Abraham and Isaac who dig wells, the Philistines who try to prevent
them.(13) Beersheba too, the city of the oath,(14) and [Gihon], the scene
of Solomon's coronation,"(15) derive their names from springs. It is beside
a well that Eliezer finds Rebekah.(16) Rachel too is a drawer of water and
wins a kiss thereby(17) from the supplanter(18) Jacob. When the daughters
of the priests of Midian are in a strait to reach the well, Moses opens a
way for them and delivers them from outrage.(19) The Lord's forerunner at
Salem (a name which means peace or perfection) makes ready the people for
Christ with spring-water.(20) The Saviour Himself does not preach the
kingdom of heaven until by His baptismal immersion He has cleansed the
Jordan.(21) Water is the matter of His first miracle(1) and it is from a
well that the Samaritan woman is bidden to slake her thirst.(2) To
Nicodemus He secretly says:--"Except a man be born of water and of the
Spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God."(3) As His earthly course
began with water, so it ended with it. His side is pierced by the spear,
and blood and water flow forth, twin emblems of baptism and of
martyrdom.(4) After His resurrection also, when sending His apostles to the
Gentiles, He commands them to baptize these in the mystery of the
Trinity.(5) The Jewish people repenting of their misdoing are sent
forthwith by Peter to be baptized.(6) Before Sion travails she brings forth
children, and a nation is born at once.(7) Paul the persecutor of the
church, that ravening wolf out of Benjamin,(8) bows his head before Ananias
one of Christ's sheep, and only recovers his sight when he applies the
remedy of baptism.(2) By the reading of the prophet the eunuch of Candace
the queen of Ethiopia is made ready for the baptism of Christ.(10) Though
it is against nature the Ethiopian does change his skin and the leopard his
spots.(11) Those who have received only John's baptism and have no
knowledge of the Holy Spirit are baptized again, lest any should suppose
that water unsanctified thereby could suffice for the salvation of either
Jew or Gentile."(12) "The voice of the Lord is upon the waters ... The Lord
is upon many waters ... the Lord maketh the flood to inhabit it."(13) His
"teeth are like a flock of sheep that are even shorn which came up from the
washing; whereof everyone bear twins, and none is barren among them."(14)
If none is barren among them, all of them must have udders filled with milk
and be able to say with the apostle: "Ye are my little children, of whom I
travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you;"(15) and "I have fed
you with milk and not with meat."(16) And it is to the grace of baptism
that the prophecy of Micah refers: "He will turn again, he will have
compassion upon us: he will subdue our iniquities, and will cast all our
sins(17) into the depths of the sea."(18)
7. How then can you say that all sins are drowned in the baptismal
layer if a man's wife is still to swim on the surface as evidence against
him? The psalmist says:-- "Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven,
whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not
iniquity."(1) It would seem that we must add something to this song and say
"Blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputeth not a wife." Let us hear also
the declaration which Ezekiel the so called "son of man"(2) makes
concerning the virtue of him who is to be the true son of man, the
Christian: "I will take you," he says, "from among the heathen ... then
will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean from all your
filthiness a new heart also will I give you and a new spirit."(3) "From all
your filthiness" he says, "will I cleanse you." If all is taken away
nothing can be left. If filthiness is cleansed, how much more is cleanness
kept from defilement. "A new heart also will I give you and a new spirit."
Yes, for "in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything nor
uncircumcision but a new nature."(4) Wherefore the song also which we sing
is a new song,(5) and putting off the old man(6) we walk not in the oldness
of the letter but in the newness of the spirit.(7) This is the new stone
wherein the new name is written, "which no man knoweth saving he that
receiveth it."(8) "Know ye not," says the apostle, "that so many of us as
were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we
are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised
up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in
newness of life."(9) Do we read so often of newness and of making new and
yet can no renewing efface the stain which the word wife brings with it? We
are buried with Christ by baptism and we have risen again by faith in the
working of God who hath called Him from the dead. And "when we were dead in
our sins and in the uncircumcision of our flesh, God hath quickened us
together with Him, having forgiven us all trespasses; blotting out the
handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us,
and took it out of the way nailing it to His cross."(10) Can it be that
when our whole being is dead with Christ and when all the sins noted down
in the old "handwriting" are blotted out, the one word "wife" alone lives
on? Time would fail me were I to try to lay before you in order all the
passages in the Holy Scriptures which relate to the efficacy of baptism or
to explain the mysterious doctrine of that second birth which though it is
our second is yet our first in Christ.
8. Before I make an end of dictating (for I perceive that I have
already exceeded the just limits of a letter) I wish to give a brief
explanation of the previous verses of the epistle in which the apostle
describes the life of him that is to be made a bishop. We shall thus
recognize him as Doctor of the Nations(1) not only for his praise of
monogamy but also for all his precepts. At the same time I beg that no one
will suppose that in what I write my design is to blacken the priests of
the present day. My one object is to promote the interest of the church.
Just as orators and philosophers in giving their notions of the perfect
orator and the perfect philosopher do not detract from Demosthenes and
Plato but merely set forth abstract ideals; so, when I describe a bishop
and explain the qualifications laid down for the episcopate, I am but
supplying a mirror for priests. Every man's conscience will tell him that
it rests with himself what image he will see reflected there, whether one
that will grieve him by its deformity or one that will gladden him by its
beauty. I turn now to the passage in question.(2) "If a man desire the
office of a bishop, he desireth a good, work." Work, you see, not rank;
toil not pleasure; work that he may increase in lowliness, not grow proud
by reason of elevation. "A bishop then must be blameless." The same thing
that he says to Titus, "if any be blameless."(2) All the virtues are
comprehended in this one word; thus he seems to require an impossible
perfection. For if every sin, even every idle word, is deserving of blame,
who is there in this world that is sinless and blameless? Still he who is
chosen to be shepherd of the church must be one compared with whom other
men are rightly regarded as but a flock of sheep. Rhetoricians define an
orator as a good man able to speak. To be worthy of so high an honour he
must be blameless in life and lip. For a teacher loses all his influence
whose words are rendered null by his deeds. "The husband of one wife."
Concerning this requirement I have spoken above. I will now only warn you
that If monogamy is insisted on before baptism the other conditions laid
down must be insisted on before baptism too. For it is impossible to regard
the remaining obligations as binding only on the baptized and this alone as
binding also on the unbaptized. "Vigilant (or "temperate" for nhphalios
means both) wise,(4) of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to
teach." The priests who minister in God's temple are forbidden to drink
wine and strong drink,(5) to keep their wits from being stupefied with
drunkenness and to enable their understanding to do its duty in God's
service. By the word 'wise' those are excluded who plead simplicity as an
excuse for a priest's folly. For if the brain be not sound, all the members
will be amiss. The phrase "of good behaviour" is an extension of the
previous epithet "blameless." One who has no faults is called "blameless;
"one who is rich in virtues is said to be "of good behaviour." Or the words
may be differently explained in accord with Tully's maxim,(1) 'the main
thing is that what you do you should do gracefully.' For some persons are
so ignorant of their own measure(2) and so stupid and foolish that they
make themselves laughing stocks to those who see them because of their
gesture or gait or dress or conversation. Fancying that they knew what is
and what is not good taste they deck themselves out with finery and bodily
adornments and give banquets which profess to be elegant: but all such
attempts at dress and display are nastier than a beggar's rags. As regards
the obligation of priests to be teachers we bare the precepts of the old
Law(3) and the fuller instructions given on the subject to Titus.(4) For an
innocent and unobtrusive conversation does as much harm by its silence as
it does good by its example. If the ravening wolves are to be frightened
away it must be by the barking of dogs and by the staff of the shepherd.
"Not given to wine, no striker." With the virtues they are to aim at he
contrasts the vices they are to avoid.
9. We have learned what we ought to be: let us now learn what priests
ought not to be Indulgence in wine is the fault of diners out and
revellers. When the body is heated with drink it soon boils over with lust.
Wine drinking means self-indulgence, self- indulgence means sensual
gratification, sensual gratification means a breach of chastity. He that
lives in pleasure is dead while he lives,(5) and he that drinks himself
drunk is not only dead but buried. One hour's debauch makes Noah uncover
his nakedness which through sixty years of sobriety he had kept covered.(6)
Lot in a fit of intoxication unwittingly adds incest to incontinence, and
wine overcomes the man whom Sodom failed to conquer.(7) A bishop that is a
striker is condemned by Him who gave His back to the smiters,(8) and when
He was reviled reviled not again.(9) "But moderate";(10) one good thing is
set over against two evil things. Drunkenness and passion are to be held in
check by moderation. "Not a brawler, not covetous." Nothing is more
overweening than the assurance of the ignorant who fancy that incessant
chatter will carry conviction with it and are always ready for a dispute
that they may thunder with turgid eloquence against the flock committed to
their charge. That a priest must avoid covetousness even Samuel teaches
when he proves before all the people that he has taken nothing from any
man.(1) And the same lesson is taught by the poverty of the apostles who
used to receive sustenance and refreshment from their brethren and to boast
that they neither had nor wished to have anything besides food and
raiment.(2) What the epistle to Timothy calls covetousness, that to Titus
openly censures as the desire for filthy lucre.(3) "One that ruleth well
his own house." Not by increasing riches, not by providing regal banquets,
not by having a pile of finely-wrought plates, not by slowly steaming
pheasants so that the heat may reach the bones without melting the flesh
upon them; no, but by first requiring of his own household the conduct
which he has to inculcate in others. "Having his children in subjection
with all gravity." They must not, that is, follow the example of the sons
of Eli who lay with the women in the vestibule of the Temple and, supposing
religion to consist in plunder, diverted to the gratification of their own
appetites all the best parts of the victims.(4) "Not a novice lest being
lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil." I cannot
sufficiently express my amazement at the great blindness which makes men
discuss such questions as that of marriage before baptism and causes them
to charge people with a transaction which is dead in baptism, nay even
quickened into a new life with Christ, while no one regards a commandment
so clear and unmistakable as this about bishops not being novices. One who
was yesterday a catechumen is to-day a bishop(5) ; one who was yesterday in
the amphitheatre is to-day in the church; one who spent the evening in the
circus stands in the morning at the altar: one who a little while ago was a
patron of actors is now a dedicator of virgins. Was the apostle ignorant of
our shifts and subterfuges? did he know nothing of our foolish arguments?
He not only says that a bishop must be the husband of one wife, but he has
given commandment that he must be blameless, vigilant, sober, of good
behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach, moderate,(6) not given to
wine, no striker, not a brawler, not covetous, not a novice. Yet to all
these requirements we shut our eyes and notice nothing but the wives of the
aspirants. Who cannot give instances to shew the need of the warning: "lest
being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil?" A
priest(1) who is made such in a moment knows nothing of the lowliness and
meekness which mark the meanest of the faithful, he knows nothing of
Christian courtesy, he is not wise enough to think little of himself. He
passes from one dignity to another, yet he has not fasted, he has not wept,
he has not taken himself to task for his life, he has not striven by
constant meditation to amend it, he has not given his substance to the
poor. Yet he is moved from one see(2) to another, he passes, that is, from
pride to pride. There can be no doubt that arrogance is what the Apostle
means when he speaks of the condemnation and downfall of the devil. And all
men fall into this who are in a moment made masters, actually before they
are disciples. "Moreover he must have a good report of them which are
without." The last requirement is like the first. One who is really
"blameless" obtains the unanimous approval not only of his own household
but of outsiders as well. By aliens and persons outside the church we are
to understand Jews, heretics and Gentiles. A Christian bishop then must be
such that they who cavil at his religion may not venture to cavil at his
life. At present however we see but too many bishops who are willing, like
the charioteers in the horse races, to bid money for the popular applause;
while there are some so universally hated that they can wring no money from
their people, a feat which clowns accomplish by means of a few gestures.
10. Such are the conditions, son Oceanus, which the master-teachers of
the church ought with anxiety and fear to require of others and to observe
themselves. Such too are the canons which they should follow in the choice
of persons for the priesthood; for they must not interpret the law of
Christ to suit private animosities and feuds or to gratify ill-feeling
which is sure to recoil on the man who cherishes it. Consider how
unimpeachable is the character of Carterius in whose life his ill-wishers
can find nothing to censure except a marriage contracted before baptism.
"He that said, Do not commit adultery, said also, Do not kill. If we commit
no adultery yet if we kill, we are become transgressors of the law."(3)
"Whosoever shall keep the whole law and yet offend in one point, he is
guilty of all."(4) Accordingly when they cast in our teeth a marriage
entered into before baptism, we must require of them compliance with all
the precepts which are given to the baptized. For they pass over much that
is not allowable while they censure much that is allowed.
LETTER LXX: TO MAGNUS AN ORATOR OF ROME.
Jerome thanks Magnus. a Roman orator, for his services in bringing a young
man named Sebesius to apologize to him for some fault that he had
committed. He then replies to a criticism of Magnus on his fondness for
making quotations from profane writers, a practice which he defends by the
example of the fathers of the church and of the inspired penmen of
scripture. He ends by hinting that the objection really comes not from
Magnus himself but from Rufinus (here nicknamed Calpurnius Lanarius). The
date of the letter is 397 A.D.
1. That our friend Sebesius has profited by your advice I have learned
less from your letter than from his own penitence. And strange to say the
pleasure which he has given me since his rebuke is greater than the pain he
caused me from his previous waywardness. There has been indeed a conflict
between indulgence in the father, and affection in the son; while the
former is anxious to forget the past, the latter is eager to promise
dutiful behaviour in the future. Accordingly you and I must equally
rejoice, you because you have successfully put a pupil to the test, I
because I have received a son again.
2. You ask me at the close of your letter why it is that sometimes in
my writings I quote examples from secular literature and thus defile the
whiteness of the church with the foulness of heathenism. I will now briefly
answer your question. You would never have asked it, had not your mind been
wholly taken up with Tully; you would never have asked it had you made it a
practice instead of studying Volcatius' to read the holy scriptures and the
commentators upon them. For who is there who does not know that both in
Moses and in the prophets there are passages cited from Gentile books and
that Solomon proposed questions to the philosophers of Tyre and answered
others put to him by them.(2) In the commencement of the book of Proverbs
he charges us to understand prudent maxims and shrewd adages, parables and
obscure discourse, the words of the wise and their dark sayings;(3) all of
which belong by right to the sphere of the dialectician and the
philosopher. The Apostle Paul also, in writing to Titus, has used a line of
the poet Epimenides: "The Cretians are always liars, evil beasts, slow
bellies."(4) Half of which line was afterwards adopted by Callimachus. It
is not surprising that a literal rendering of the words into Latin should
fail to preserve the metre, seeing that Homer when translated into the same
language is scarcely intelligible even in prose. In another epistle Paul
quotes a line of Menander: "Evil communications corrupt good manners."(1)
And when he is arguing with the Athenians upon the Areopagus he calls
Aratus as a witness citing from him the words "For we are also his
offspring;"(2) in Greek tou^ ga`r kai` ge'nos esmen, the close of a heroic
verse. And as if this were not enough, that leader of the Christian army,
that unvanquished pleader for the cause of Christ, skilfully turns a chance
inscription into a proof of the faith.(3) For he had learned from the true
David to wrench the sword of the enemy out of his hand and with his own
blade to cut off the head of the arrogant Goliath.(4) He had read in
Deuteronomy the command given by the voice of the Lord that when a captive
woman had had her head shaved, her eyebrows and all her hair cut off, and
her nails pared, she might then be taken to wife.(5) Is it surprising that
I too, admiring the fairness of her form and the grace of her eloquence,
desire to make that secular wisdom which is my captive and my handmaid, a
matron of the true Israel? Or that shaving off and cutting away all in her
that is dead whether this be idolatry, pleasure, error, or lust, I take her
to myself clean and pure and beget by her servants for the Lord of Sabaoth?
My efforts promote the advantage of Christ's family, my so-called
defilement with an alien increases the number of my fellow-servants. Hosea
took a wife of whoredoms, Gomer the daughter of Diblaim, and this harlot
bore him a son called Jezreel or the seed of God.(6) Isaiah speaks of a
sharp razor which shaves "the head of sinners and the hair of their
feet;"(7) and Ezekiel shaves his head as a type of that Jerusalem which has
been an harlot,(8) in sign that whatever in her is devoid of sense 'and
life must be removed.
3. Cyprian, a man renowned both for his eloquence and for his martyr's
death, was assailed--so Firmian tells us'--for having used in his treatise
against Demetrius passages from the Prophets and the Apostles which the
latter declared to be fabricated and made up, instead of passages from the
philosophers and poets whose authority he, as a heathen, could not well
gainsay. Celsus(10) and Porphyry(11) have written against us and have been
ably answered, the former by Origen, the latter by Methodius, Eusebius, and
Apollinaris.(12) Origen wrote a treatise in eight books, the work of
Methodius(1) extended to ten thousand lines while Eusebius(2) and
Apollinaris(3) composed twenty- five and thirty volumes respectively. Read
these and you will find that compared with them I am a mere tyro in
learning, and that, as my wits have long lain fallow, I can barely recall
as in a dream what I have learned as a boy. The emperor Julian(4) found
time during his Parthian campaign to vomit forth seven books against Christ
and, as so often happens in poetic legends, only wounded himself with his
own sword. Were I to try to confute him with the doctrines of philosophers
and stoics you would doubtless forbid me to strike a mad dog with the club
of Hercules It is true that he presently felt in battle the hand of our
Nazarene or, as he used to call him, the Galilaean,(5) and that a spear-
thrust in the vitals paid him due recompense for his foul calumnies. To
prove the antiquity of the Jewish people Josephus(6) has written two books
against Appio a grammarian of Alexandria; and in these he brings forward so
many quotations from secular writers as to make me marvel how a Hebrew
brought up from his childhood to read the sacred scriptures could also have
perused the whole library of the Greeks. Need I speak of Philo(7) whom
critics call the second or the Jewish Plato?
4. Let me now run through the list of our own writers. Did not
Quadratus(8) a disciple of the apostles and bishop of the Athenian church
deliver to the Emperor Hadrian (on the occasion of his visit to the
Eleusinian mysteries) a treatise in defence of our religion. And so great
was the admiration caused in everyone by his eminent ability that it
stilled a most severe persecution. The philosopher Aristides," a man of
great eloquence, presented to the same Emperor an apology for the
Christians composed of extracts from philosophic writers. His example was
afterwards followed by Justin(10) another philosopher who delivered to
Antoninus Plus and his sons" and to the senate a treatise Against the
Gentiles, in which he defended the ignominy of the cross and preached the
resurrection of Christ with all freedom. Need I speak of Melito(1) bishop
of Sardis, of Apollinaris(2) chief-priest of the Church of Hierapolis, of
Dionysius(3) bishop of the Corinthians, of Tatian,(4) of Bardesanes,(5) of
Irenaeus(6) successor to the martyr Pothinus;(7) all of whom have in many
volumes explained the uprisings of the several heresies and tracked them
back, each to the philosophic source from which it flows. Pantaenus,(8) a
philosopher of the Stoic school, was on account of his great reputation for
learning sent by Demetrius bishop of Alexandria to India, to preach Christ
to the Brahmans and philosophers there. Clement,(9) a presbyter of
Alexandria, in my judgment the most learned of men, wrote eight books of
Miscellanies(10) and as many of Outline Sketches,(11) a treatise against
the Gentiles, and three volumes called the Pedagogue. Is there any want of
learning in these, or are they not rather drawn from the very heart of
philosophy? Imitating his example Origen(12) wrote ten books of
Miscellanies, in which he compares together the opinions held respectively
by Christians and by philosophers, and confirms all the dogmas of our
religion by quotations from Plato and Aristotle, from Numenius(13) and
Cornutus.(14) Miltiades(15) also wrote an excellent treatise against the
Gentiles. Moreover Hippolytus(16) and a Roman senator named Apollonius(17)
have each compiled apologetic works. The books of Julius Africanus(18) who
wrote a history of his own times are still extant, as also are those of
Theodore who was afterwards called Gregory,(19) a man endowed with
apostolic miracles as well as with apostolic virtues. We still have the
works of Dionysius(1) bishop of Alexandria, of Anatolius(2) chief priest of
the church of Laodicea, of the presbyters Pamphilus,(3) Pierius,(4)
Lucian,(5) Malchion;(6) of Eusebius(7) bishop of Csarea, Eustathius(8) of
Antioch and Athanasius(9) of Alexandria; of Eusebius(10) of Emisa, of
Triphyllius(11) of Cyprus, of Asterius(13) of Scythopolis, of the confessor
Serapion,(13) of Titus(14) bishop of Bostra; and of the Cappadocians
Basil,(15) Gregory,(16) and Amphilochius.(17) All these writers so
frequently interweave in their books the doctrines and maxims of the
philosophers that you might easily be at a loss which to admire most, their
secular erudition or their knowledge of the scriptures.
5. I will pass on to Latin writers. Can anything be more learned or
more pointed than the style of Tertullian?(18) His Apology and his books
Against the Gentiles contain all the wisdom of the world. Minucius
Felix(19) a pleader in the Roman courts has ransacked all heathen
literature to adorn the pages of his Octavius and of his treatise Against
the astrologers(unless indeed this latter is falsely ascribed to him).
Arnobius(20) has published seven books against the Gentiles, and his pupil
Lactantius(21) as many, besides two volumes, one on Anger and the other on
the creative activity of God. If you read any of these you will find in
them an epitome of
Cicero's dialogues. The Martyr Victorinus(1) though as a writer deficient
in learning is not deficient in the wish to use what learning he has. Then
there is Cyprian.(2) With what terseness, with what knowledge of all
history, with what splendid rhetoric and argument has he touched the theme
that idols are no Gods! Hilary(2) too, a confessor and bishop of my own
day, has imitated Quintilian's twelve books both in number and in style,
and has also shewn his ability as a writer in his short treatise against
Dioscorus the physician. In the reign of Constantine the presbyter
Juvencus(4) set forth in verse the story of our Lord and Saviour, and did
not shrink from forcing into metre the majestic phrases of the Gospel. Of
other writers dead and living I say nothing. Their aim and their ability
are evident to all who read them.(5)
6. You must not adopt the mistaken opinion, that while in dealing with
the Gentiles one may appeal to their literature in all other discussions
one ought to ignore it; for almost all the books of all these writers--
except those who like Epicurus(6) are no scholars--are extremely full of
erudition and philosophy. I incline indeed to fancy--the thought comes into
my head as I dictate--that you yourself know quite well what has always
been the practice of the learned in this matter. I believe that in putting
this question to me you are only the mouthpiece of another who by reason of
his love for the histories of Sallust might well be called Calpurnius
Lanarius.(7) Please beg of him not to envy eaters their teeth because he is
toothless himself, and not to make light of the eyes of gazelles because he
is himself a mole. Here as you see there is abundant material for
discussion, but I have already filled the limits at my disposal.
LETTER LXXI.: TO LUCINIUS.
Lucinius was a wealthy Spaniard of Btica who in conformity with the ascetic
ideas of his time had made a vow of continence with his wife Theodora.
Being much interested in the study of scripture he proposed to visit
Bethlehem, and in A.D. 397 sent several scribes thither to transcribe for
him Jerome's principal writings. To these on their return home Jerome now
entrusts the following letter. In it he encourages Lucinius to fulfil his
purpose of coming to Bethlehem, describes the books Which he is sending to
him, and answers two questions relating to ecclesiastical usage. He also
sends him some trilling presents.
Shortly after receiving the letter (written in 398 A.D.) Lucinius died and
Jerome wrote to Theodora to console her for her loss (letter LXXV.).
1. Your letter which has suddenly arrived was not expected by me, and
coming in an unlooked for way it has helped to rouse me from my torpor by
the glad tidings which it conveys. I hasten to embrace with the arms of
love one whom my eyes have never seen, and silently say to myself:--'"oh
that I had wings like a dove! for then would I flee away and be at
rest."'(1) Then would I find him "whom my soul loveth."(2) In you the
Lord's words are now truly fulfilled: "many shall come from the east and
west and shall sit down with Abraham."(3) In those days the faith of my
Lucinius was foreshadowed in Cornelius, "centurion of the band called the
Italian band."(4) And when the apostle Paul writes to the Romans:
"whensoever I take my journey into Spain I will come to you: for I trust to
see you in my journey, and to be brought on my way thitherward by you;"(5)
he shews by the tale of his previous successes what he looked to gain from
that province.(6) Laying in a short time the foundation of the gospel "from
Jerusalem and round about unto Illyricum,"(7) he enters Rome in bonds, that
he may free those who are in the bonds of error and superstition. Two years
he dwells in his own hired house(8) that he may give to us the house
eternal which is spoken of in both the testaments.(9) The apostle, the
fisher of men,(10) has cast forth his net, and, among countless kinds of
fish, has landed you like a magnificent gilt-bream. You have left behind
you the bitter waves, the salt tides, the mountain-fissures; you have
despised Leviathan who reigns in the waters.(11) Your aim is to seek the
wilderness with Jesus and to sing the prophet's song: "my soul thirsteth
for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land where no
water is; to see thy power and thy glory, so as I have seen thee in the
sanctuary."(12) or, as he sings in another place, "lo, then would I wander
far off and remain in the wilderness. I would hasten my escape from the
windy storm and tempest."(13) Since you have left Sodom and are hastening
to the mountains, I beseech you with a father's affection not to look
behind you. Your hands have grasped the handle of the plough,(1) the hem of
the Saviour's garment,(2) and His locks wet with the dew of night;(3) do
not let them go. Do not come down from the housetop of virtue to seek for
the clothes which you wore of old, nor return home from the field.(4) Do
not like Lot set your heart on the plain or upon the pleasant gardens;(5)
for these are watered not, as the holy land, from heaven but by Jordan's
muddy stream made salt by contact with the Dead Sea.
2. Many begin but few persevere to the end. "They which run in a race
run all, but one receiveth the crown."(6) But of us on the other hand it is
said: "So run that ye may obtain."(7) Our master of the games is not
grudging; he does not give the palm to one and disgrace another. His wish
is that all his athletes may alike win garlands. My soul rejoices, yet the
very greatness of my joy makes me feel sad. Like Ruth(8) when I try to
speak I burst into tears. Zacchus, the convert of an hour, is accounted
worthy to receive the Saviour as his guest.(9) Martha and Mary make ready a
feast and then welcome the Lord to it.(10) A harlot washes His feet with
her tears and against His burial anoints His body with the ointment of good
works.(11) Simon the leper invites the Master with His disciples and is not
refused.(12) To Abraham it is said: "Get thee out of thy country and from
thy kindred and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew
thee."(13) He leaves Chalda, he leaves Mesopotamia; he seeks what he knows
not, not to lose Him whom he has found. He does not deem it possible to
keep both his country and his Lord; even at that early day he is already
fulfilling the prophet David's words: "I am a stranger with thee and a
sojourner, as all my fathers were."(14) He is called "a Hebrew," in Greek
pera'th's, a passer-over, for not content with present excellence but
forgetting those things which are behind he reaches forth to that which is
before.(15) He makes his own the words of the psalmist: "they shall go from
strength to strength."(16) Thus his name has a mystic meaning and he has
opened for you a way to seek not your own things but those of another. You
too must leave your home as he did, and must take for your parents,
brothers, and relations only those who are linked to you in Christ.
"Whosoever," He says, "shall do the will of my father ... the same is my
brother and sister and mother."(1)
3. You have with you one who was once your partner in the flesh but is
now your partner in the spirit; once your wife but now your sister; once a
woman but now a man; once an inferior but now an equal.(2) Under the same
yoke as you she hastens toward the same heavenly kingdom.
A too careful management of one's income, a too near calculation of
one's expenses-- these are habits not easily laid aside. Yet to escape the
Egyptian woman Joseph had to leave his garment with her.(3) And the young
man who followed Jesus having a linen cloth cast about him, when he was
assailed by the servants had to throw away his earthly covering and to flee
naked.(4) Elijah also when he was carried up in a chariot of fire to heaven
left his mantle of sheepskin on earth.(5) Elisha used for sacrifice the
oxen and the yokes which hitherto he had employed in his work.(6) We read
in Ecclesiasticus: "he that toucheth pitch shall be defiled therewith."(7)
As long as we are occupied with the things of the world, as long as our
soul is fettered with possessions and revenues, we cannot think freely of
God. "For what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? And what
communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with
Belial? Or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?"(8) "Ye
cannot," the Lord says, "serve God and Mammon."(9) Now the laying aside of
money is for those who are beginners in the way, not for those who are made
perfect. Heathens like Antisthenes(10) and Crates(11) the Theban have done
as much before now. But to offer one's self to God, this is the mark of
Christians and apostles. These like the widow out of their penury cast
their two mites into the treasury, and giving all that they have to the
Lord are counted worthy to hear his words: "ye also shall sit upon twelve
thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel."(12)
4. You can see for yourself why I mention these things; without
expressly saying it I am inviting you to take up your abode at the holy
places. Your abundance has supported the want of many that some day their
riches may abound to supply your want;(13) you have made to yourself
"friends of the mammon of unrighteousness that they may receive you into
everlasting habitations."(1) Such conduct deserves praise and merits to be
compared with the virtue of apostolic times. Then, as you know, believers
sold their possessions and brought the prices of them and laid them down at
the apostles' feet:(2) a symbolic act designed to shew that men must
trample on covetousness. But the Lord yearns for believers' souls more than
for their riches. We read in the Proverbs: "the ransom of a man's soul are
his own riches."(3) We may, indeed, take a man's own riches to be those
which do not come from some one else, or from plunder; according to the
precept: "honour God with thy just labours."(4) But the sense is better if
we understand a man's "own riches" to be those hidden treasures which no
thief can steal and no robber wrest from him.(5)
5. As for my poor works which from no merits of theirs but simply from
your own kindness you say that you desire to have; I have given them to
your servants to transcribe, I have seen the paper-copies made by them, and
I have repeatedly ordered them to correct them by a diligent comparison
with the originals. For so many are the pilgrims passing to and fro that I
have been unable to read so many volumes. They have found me also troubled
by a long illness from which this Lent I am slowly recovering as they are
leaving me. If then you find errors or omissions which interfere with the
sense, these you must impute not to me but to your own servants; they are
due to the ignorance or carelessness of the copyists, who write down not
what they find but what they take to be the meaning, and do but expose
their own mistakes when they try to correct those of others. It is a false
rumour which has reached you to the effect that I have translated the books
of Josephus(6) and the volumes of the holy men Papias(7) and Polycarp.(8) I
have neither the leisure nor the ability to preserve the charm of these
masterpieces in another tongue. Of Origen(9) and Didymus(10)I have
translated a few things, to set before my countrymen some specimens of
Greek teaching. The canon of the Hebrew verity(11)--except the
octoteuch(12) which I have at present in hand--I have placed at the
disposal of your slaves and copyists. Doubtless you already possess the
version from the septuagint(13) which many years ago I diligently revised
for the use of students. The new testament I have restored to the
authoritative form of the Greek original.(1) For as the true text of the
old testament can only be tested by a reference to the Hebrew, so the true
text of the new requires for its decision an appeal to the Greek.
6. You ask me whether you ought to fast on the Sabbath(2) and to
receive the eucharist daily according to the custom--as currently reported-
-of the churches of Rome and Spain.(3) Both these points have been treated
by the eloquent Hippolytus,(4) and several writers have collected passages
from different authors bearing upon them. The best advice that I can give
you is this. Church-traditions--especially when they do not run counter to
the faith--are to be observed in the form in which previous generations
have handed them down; and the use of one church is not to be annulled
because it is contrary to that of another.(5) As regards fasting, I wish
that we could practise it without intermission as--according to the Acts of
the Apostles(6)--Paul did and the believers with him even in the season of
Pentecost and on the Lord's Day. They are not to be accused of manichism,
for carnal food ought not to be preferred before spiritual. As regards the
holy eucharist you may receive it at all times(7) without qualm of
conscience or disapproval from me. You may listen to the psalmist's words:-
-"O taste and see that the Lord is good;"(8) you may sing as he does:--"my
heart poureth forth a good word."(9) But do not mistake my meaning. You are
not to fast on feast-days, neither are you to abstain on the week days in
Pentecost.(10) In such matters each province may follow its own
inclinations, and the traditions which have been handed down should be
regarded as apostolic laws.
7. You send me two small cloaks and a sheepskin mantle from your
wardrobe and ask me to wear them myself or to give them to the poor. In
return I send to you and your sister(11) in the Lord four small haircloths
suitable to your religious profession and to your daily needs, for they are
the mark of poverty and the outward witness of a continual penitence. To
these I have added a manuscript containing Isaiah's ten most obscure
visions which I have lately elucidated with a critical commentary. When you
look upon these trifles call to mind the friend in whom you delight and
hasten the voyage which you have for a time deferred. And because "the way
of man is not in himself" but it is the Lord that "directeth his steps;"(1)
if any hindrance should interfere--I hope none may--to prevent you from
coming, I pray that distance may not sever those united in affection and
that I may find my Lucinius present in absence through an interchange of
letters.
LETTER LXXII: TO VITALIS.
Vitalis had asked Jerome" Is Scripture credible when it tells us that
Solomon and Ahaz became fathers at the age of eleven?" The difficulty had
previously occurred to Jerome himself(Letter XXXVI. to, whence perhaps
Vitalis took it) and in this letter he suggests several ways in which it
may be met. He is quite prepared, if necessary, to accept the alleged fact
on the grounds that "there are many things in Scripture which sound
incredible and yet are true" and that "nature cannot resist the Lord of
nature" ( 2). He is disposed, however, to regard the question as trivial
and of no importance. The date of the letter is 398 A.D.
Taken from "The Early Church Fathers and Other Works" originally published
by Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co. in English in Edinburgh, Scotland, beginning in
1867. (LNPF II/VI, Schaff and Wace). The digital version is by The
Electronic Bible Society, P.O. Box 701356, Dallas, TX 75370, 214-407-WORD.
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